


Dragon

by DrellVerse



Series: Drell, Mass Effect, Among Other Sorties [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Adventure, Beasts of Burden/Agriculture/Predators/Prey, Betrayals and Plots, Caste system (towers/tierra), Comedy, Coming of Age, Companion Animals, Drama, Fantasy mixed with Science Fiction, Galactic Influence, Industrialization, Journey, Modern Technology versus Old World, Mountain/Sea/Forest/Desert/Subterranean Settings, Multiple main characters, Mystery, New cultures (drell species), Noncanonical to Mass Effect the Series, Online novel, Plague, Rakhana (alternate universe), Romance, Tragedy, Tribes and Families, Weapons (state of the art versus classic)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:08:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 28
Words: 70,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28970361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrellVerse/pseuds/DrellVerse
Summary: Someone sits in a room by a fire cleaning a rifle. . . A sniper at the edge of a canyon lays still with his sights trained below. . . A death warrant is assigned to a mother to be. . . A fatherly figure waits beneath two suns with his pupil to impart an important lesson. . . A drellahna takes life to give life. . . Thus the seeds of freedom and her story are sown.. . . A tale of Rakhana and Drell-kind, but not as they are known. . .[A/N] Rated for violence, sexual situations/implications, and graphic scenes that may be uncomfortable to some readers.
Series: Drell, Mass Effect, Among Other Sorties [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009026
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

The cottus is old, golden on the inside, warm. Shadows flicker, moving still pictures. A creature, reptilian, sits in a comfortable, aged chair. His long hand, green and striped but without order, strokes a dirty rag but soft against a long barrel made of polished black metal. He is quiet, thoughtful, inspecting the quality of shine as he kneads. His face is green and scaled, but broad are the plates on his face and head. Flat black bands wrap over his crown. He is silent. A fire in front of him to his right pops and spits. There are old, dark wooden cupboards somewhere in the house. The wall behind him is warm, grey cream. Some organic material. Rough yet well laid. The hand of the manlike creature continues to stroke a very long gun nestled across his lap.

His clothes are simple. A loose vest, mousey grey. Loose open pants the same color, but from coarser texture. His feet are bare. A big toe, two little toes joined together, a second and third smaller toe individually apart. Beside his chair is a small table, small enough to hold a few belongings. With each stroke, wiry muscles gleam and bunch in the shoulder, the arm. His left hand moves further along the barrel, touching the end, his conjoined fingers tenderly dipping into a hole. He holds that gun with love. As his chin lifts for inspection, lines of fine folded red skin stretch and lengthen open beneath his jaw, on his throat, behind his cheekbones and surrounding his ear. His hands resume their work as he bends his head down and continues to inspect. The room is quiet, but for the company of the fire.


	2. Chapter 2

_Dragon._

_A mythical creature that doesn’t exist._

_Said to ravage villages, destroy kingdoms, unsparingly devour men, women, and children._

_Some versions breathe fire, others ice, and the passing of their breath spills poison._

_The presence of their shadow means death._

_Most are evil, cunning, impossible to defeat by simple means._

_Known to guard treasure or to protect hidden lairs, they keep what they covet with jealousy and riddles._

_Dragons are imaginary, but stories exist of those that may take form of a man._


	3. Chapter 3

A shallow canyon. Gold red sand and mineral lines striate the uneven walls. The sun is to the south, sharing its light on the northern walls and a cottus that is more blocky fortress with narrow, small windows carved into its clay. It rises from the eastern depth, and beyond it, farther east, is ocean, as constantly white and blue as eternity. Or so it would seem. The sky is azure. A few wisps of white pass by. The shadows are still cool and long, shrinking as the minutes go by. The smoothness of the cottus walls contrasts with the crags of the canyon’s walls. This crack in the terrain’s surface wanders jaggedly away. Moving closer to the treacherous lip of the canyon’s south wall, the barra can be seen below in the compound, white billowing clothes, moving and resting at leisure in the early morning hour. Small fires released smoke, ring stones and wood around their bases, and more white pants and colored copper scales reflect the warming sunlight. Shadows creep back. A wind blows eastward.

His elbows hurt, but he ignores it. The sun is at his back, a loose cloth the same color as the sandcovers his rifle. The wind carries sound down the canyon eastward. His eye widens as he pressed forward against lens no wider than five millimeters. His rags cover his head, down to his feet. He is no less a rock or a fossil, perfectly matched with the terrain above the canyon wall. The canyon stretches a mile wide where he is and the fortified cottus is less than a quarter of a mile away from the bottom of the southern cliffs. The barra is protected by a wall of its own, but this does little for it is the canyon that is the true defense. The treasach needed to rely on being hidden and having access to the water. For undisputed fishing and as a means of escape. Tucked in the middle of nowhere, the ruling family could thrive in secrecy. But that was about to change.

The cottus was a stacked level of squares and rectangles, piled high one on another. It was nothing ostentatious with its flat simple walls. There were no balconies. No large windows, only small ones. The entrance was well-guarded by fire urns and burrell dressed in the grey green colors of the treasach’s family. Boats could be seen at a distance, closer to the shoreline less than two miles away. The barra’s Drell had to travel downhill to reach the water, so there was no need to elevate the cottus for passage of rising tides. Off in the distance, hidden behind giant natural sculptures of organic rock carved by wind, storm, and wave, six large galiena bobbed and waited just out of sight of the canyon’s mouth. Red, gold, and white peacefully fluttered in the stretching wind winding through the towers of carved rocks over water deep and serene.

The dwennon housing the chief of burrell was a small square halfway between the cottus and northern canyon wall. A figure could be seen emerging with three more, captains of the barra being issued for duty. With these burrell and burrella, orders would be carried to activate the troops from their milling about, enjoying one final dawn. A single grey green uniform in white undinia ran to the northern wall, where lay hidden a ladder carved into the face of sheer red and gold rock. At the top, a mile climb, was a pyre meant to burn in the event of an emergency. Beside it, along the ground, was a stain of white, grey and green. The former sentry above the cliffs who had been watching the water for early signs of danger.

His finger pressed the hair sensitive trigger.

Again.

Again.

Again.

The chief of burrell, three captains including the one running to the wall, all fell.

None were the wiser.


	4. Chapter 4

The granwen was clear, but deep red. Through it could be seen the large open mouth of a fireplace surrounded by ornate rock detailed with relief and carving far more intricate and shaped than the pillars over waters at Pilib Bay. His green and black hand nestled under the bowl of the glass, pinching the stem with immaculate fingernails and quicks. A faint yellowing could be seen on the cusp of his palm exposed beneath the glass. He wore a red and white gold dress of the Kerhasi barra.

“Cahira is taken care of. Yours for the taking.”

The chair he was in was lined with fur, red and gold with a strip of white hidden by his back. One leg was crossed over one knee. He was swirling the granwen in his glass with a well-timed push of his finger. There were curtains covering the walls, windows behind these, open without pane. The floor was covered in reed. A table before him, on which sat bottles of granwen and syver. Some fruit, green and orange, was laid out in a crystal tray. Colors of red, gold, and white decked the walls, in addition to the curtains rustling in a breeze that brought cool air with it. Before him, beyond the table, a thick, dark blue arm with black flames licking up the forearm and elbow bent to pick up a glass to accept a pour from a bottle dark and green.

“You did well. My barra had no difficulty sweeping the Cahira. They brought me the heiress, but I have no need of her. Would you like a taste?” The arm extended holding the small glass.

“No, thank you. The libation is superb, by the way.”

“I meant the heiress.”

“I’m married.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t sample my hara. Drell such as you needs to spread his seed. There will always be need for Serepta, especially one of your skill.”

“I have a boy on the way.”

“A boy? Excellent! The tides say this?”

“Kiross has ever borne males.”

“You seem so certain. I wish I had such faith in my own seed.”

“Try not dispersing it so wide.”

The laughter was deep, rumbling.

“I enjoy my hara.”

“I’m sure your mitali doesn’t.”

The arm lowered the glass to waist level, empty.

“She is pregnant. No use to my primitive urges. A Drell needs his thirst slaked, lest he start making decisions afoul.”

“I sleep with my mitali. I make no errors.”

“Then you are a patient Drell.”

“I love my wife.”

The lavish chair beside him creaked with the weight of the Kerhasi governor. He held his small glass in a blue, impossibly large hand, and placed this down with as much delicacy used to not disturb a flower. The patak of his face was broad and curved, giving him an effeminate look that could easily adopt a wild anger. His red eyes were strange in a face so deep blue, almost attractive. His crown and crest were black, but the deep blue of the arching eye ridges was carried through the scales around his temples and into the pentagonal scale marking his middle brow. His thick elbow supported his weight on the arm rest. He wore the grey green colors of a tunic his barra had taken off the Cahira patriach and sported this for his triumph and gloating pleasure. His pants were black and wrapped around trunks of legs, bent upwards so his feet could lay flat on the floor.

“Are you preaching to me, Cuillean?”

“Never.”

The green eye ridges deviously lowered with mocking scorn as flat, green lips curled into a wider smile.

“I wouldn’t dream of telling the great Bor Kratos of what to do.”

He hummed with laughter. Blue fingers curled around the arm ends as his sculpted face turned to the fire.

“I’ve known you long enough to know when you are fooling with me, Cuillean. Let us hope your future son will be blessed not only with your skill, but with your charm. Have you decided on a name yet?”

“Cagney.”

“Cagney Kiross. Your decision or your wife’s?”

“Both.”

“How quaint. You both agree on a name for your heir together. Speaking of names, one of my hara has conceived a bannon. I may need you to tie up some loose ends.”

“I don’t kill children.”

“Ah, but you can kill the mother.”


	5. Chapter 5

There is a cricket, tawny brown with black striping along its head, sharply bent back legs and plump abdomen. It loudly shrills, the long tenuous antenna straight out, alert yet relaxed. It shrills twice more between the shadow and sun, comfortably nestled between a rock and sand. The sands there are yellow, the rock slightly darker. The sky is blue, no clouds, no wind. Hot, but typical of the late noon hour.

The cricket rasps its tawny brown mandibles together, a contemplative movement, then produces a clear liquid bead that magnifies its jaws as it regurgitates its belly’s contents and reconsiders the flavor. The cricket rests in the shade, bored, unwilling to leave the shelter of that flat rock jutting sideways at an angle to the sky and gritty sand.

Small pebbles of white no bigger than the cricket’s barbed claws can be seen strewn among this soil. A movement stirs above the rock, in the sun, but out of view of the cricket’s faceted golden eyes and its long, slender feelers. A scorpion moves across the rock, six segmented legs winding slowly, continuously rotating hinges at joints connected to a yellow thorax, fat and long with interlapping plates of armor, horned and bristly as barnacles. A plump tail is curved, a backwards C that ends in a black tip, a barb filled with poison. The tail holds up high, tensed, as the armored crustacean claws are held ahead of its flat, blunt face, paying homage to the sun. A blush of black tints the top of its claws. Two parallel black eyes sit in the middle of its body, close together, impossibly tight, a periscope above the horny armor. A shadow falls over it and it stills, pausing to consider this new development. Why should the sun disappear when there are no clouds in the sky?

A shine. A gleam. A soft ‘puck’ as steel slides easily through thin veneer of armor, and the arachnid arches, flexing its legs under itself with death throes. Held up to the blue sky, touched with no cloud, a breathtaking green and black eyed face firmly patted smooth with slick scales, full lips divided by god’s brush stroke of ink from chin to beneath the nose, sensitive and held close to a gentle face that is both young and old. The brown and yellow scorpion on the tip of steel curving through and out its thorax, jutting backwards in an arc towards its bearer’s thoughtful face, is reflected—both blade tip and writhing, tail-flicking yellow scorpion—in eyes that have been polished, or appear so, by the finest of silk cloths. A green and yellow set of conjoined fingers, a separate thumb, take hold of the plump, curling tail, confidently avoiding the poisonous barb tipped in black, and with a pinch of green and black fingernails, disconnects the arachnid’s weapon.

He proceeds to eat this afternoon snack off the tip of his blade, the soft crunch of brittleness releasing an acidic, pungent flavor into his mouth as he turns to face the blue horizon, where the gold and red sands end to meet the sky of Rakhana.

“Pay attention.” The voice beside him smoothly rasps, a bubbling brook over jagged rocks.

He faces the other direction anew, yellow and red scales along the fringe of tebris dipping down over developing muscles of neck, into a sheer yellow shirt.

“Watch the wyrttun.”

A slick body with black and yellow scale, black feathering among short but elongated mane framing the base of a flat skull. Something serpentine and long snouted emerges from a hidden dune, nearly invisible among the rest. It hides a den full of fowl-like serpents. They move, snakes on four legs, short and abducted to keep low to the sands.

“The rains have not visited. Food is scarce. A wyrttun will do anything to survive, and it breeds, blessed as a plague.”

More smaller, black and yellow versions of the adult male come out above the dune’s secret lair in the sand, followed by a thin, gangly female, her underbelly nipples loose.

“Her milk will be sour. The little ones will feed on her when she dies. It is how she increases the likelihood of their survival. They will know the taste of blood, possess her venom then, and use it to hunt and kill. Whether they find prey. . . Or prey on each other.”

A set of brown eyelids, then a set of green, closed and blinked open.

The male wyrttun hissed and rattled, thin feathers rising from the nape of its neck to the back between gaunt shoulders. A juvenile had wandered near.

Its black maw opened, sharp, vicious straight fangs profiled against the red gold dune behind it as the neck arced, shot straight, and snatched the juvenile with a quick choke-back motion, pulling the lithe limbs and tail into a dark maw, to stave off hunger.

The female disappeared, and so did the rest of the juveniles.

“The father will kill its young. The need to survive exceeds the need to nurture among the foul species. Remember that.”

Green and yellow hands levered a long barreled rifle from the sand, black eyes aligning with the sights.

The sun was hot.

The sky was blue.

There was no wind until a faint, weak gust fussed at their backs.

Three seconds passed by.

He held his breath.

The wyrttun three hundred yards away turned its beady black eyes and blood slickened snout in their direction, the front pair of lips peeling back to bear glistening sharp teeth. As the black feathers rose on their hackles, a green thumb activated a safety on the side by the trigger, and as the old Drell breathed out, his conjoined two fingers made their intended stroke.

The female came out shortly after, a black mark on the helpful sand. She began to rush towards them, slipping out of view and rising above the dunes in her race to reach them.

His finger paused, waiting, then stroked the trigger again.

“If you kill one, the rest will come. The whole den must be cleared."

“And the offspring?”

The green and yellow face, sharing similar features to he, gazed over at him. A light blue cowl, ragged and wisped, hung drab about the Drell's face.

“Sometimes, the best mircea you can give them is fleet death.”


	6. Chapter 6

Pearl scales tinged yellow. Long opal eyes filled with white. Fingernails as pale as her skin. Row and row of fine, fine patterned coins laying over each other from her fingers to her hands, up over her wrists, beneath the vestigial garments of gossamer and pale.The folds gathered at her waist, over her hip, pooled beneath her on the floor of carpet, a round sun under her rump. Her legs were out, one slightly folded, her left foot hidden behind the calf of the right. A thin pant, white as gossamer covering this. The right foot exposed, toenails five, short and oval. The second and third toe linked like that of her hands, and a faint oil gleam on their raised surfaces and in between. The outline of her bones could be seen. She was precious, not frail. One hand languidly lay across her hip, the hint of tebral folds clear through the sheer cloth meant to hide yet suggest. Darker, red underneath. Red eyes met those dark in the shadows of the entrance to her boudicea in the hara.

The walls isolated them in the tranquility of upside down arches clutching to joints of ceiling, ribbons of rainbow without color. The fire was silent, holding its baited breath. A warm glow flickered on her face and clothing. The hand on the floor was warm with its orange. Beneath it, the spreading circle of handwoven carpetry was gold, thorned dark red, threaded more with navy, permeating from where her hand rested as a ripple that had spiraled to a dark red organic floor. She was impossibly delicate, but not thin nor frail. Two crests swooped from over her eyes along the sides of her head at obliques. These were slightly more yellow, flared outward and forward from the back of her skull, appearing to hold her face in a halo and join amid her tebris, dark, red as velvet scintillating wine beneath the smooth curve of her jaw. The chutes along her upper tebris raised and curled unlike his own, which looped and pointed downward into his tebris of fine red folds hidden below a dark hood, rimmed gold, striped with thin white piping along the border, the rest crimson as it covered his head and shielded him from the expectant fire.

Her left hand fell to the gossamer folds upon her belly as she waited for him.

Cuillean fell to his knees.

“I know why you’re here.” Her voice whispered, flanged with a rough quality of paper gliding through sand.

He had never made more presence in his life.

Sliding his knees forward across the floor, staining his pants with dust meant to betray those who entered Bor’s hara, he stained the carpet as he slid into this with weakened knees. In his fist jutted back a long, curved, double-edged blade for easy passage through unguarded skin. His hand felt loose around the brown hilt, strapped with leather flush, smoothly tightened for the best grip. The guard was non-existent so he could rotate the blade without hindrance, the pommel a dark and black. The blade was silver blue, clean and well honed. It reflected no light, only gave off darkness. He held this in front of his waist now, both hands cupping the hilt and blade.

“I don’t want to do this. . . Not to you. . . How. . . How did I not know?”

“Take the child. It will be a boy, and he is ready. Take him to the Kerhasla and give him to the sooleawa.”

He shook his head. She took the knife and held it to the fine folds of gossamer, above to the wine tebris. The tip did not waver at the entrance to her throat, where life began to spill.

He moaned.

“One day it will free you,” she said, pushing deeper. The colors of her scales, once pearl and pristine, fell red and stained with her life’s essence flowing out over the blade handle.

Cuillean’s left hand shoved off his crimson hood, bearing him full to her to look upon as she died. The pale eyes, luminous, gazed up at him as he helped lower her to the carpet, taking the knife with her blood from her hand.

“What is his name?” His voice a dry whisper.

“Malcham,” she sighed with her final breath, blood pumping to spread onto the carpet as she lay down in it and smiled at him hovering above. “Malcham Kratos.”


	7. Chapter 7

The first moon was edging high, a white disc with a gray curvature on its rim. It barreled above a rigid mountain range, inky black and foreboding as it ate at the sky. The night was blue, but dark as royal deep, and stars glinted out from her blanket over silvery dunes. Here and there an outcrop, some deceivingly small as these rocks were cut off by dunes hiding their true sizes. Strange shapes were on the sands. One moved.

At first it was an animal, rising and falling along the slopes. It was humped in front and had a rounded point on top. It staggered, stopped, moved ever on. A salt wind blew. Silence, but for the whispers of sands rolling over sands, or waves in the distance. The dunes had a tint of yellow and gold in the silver cast of the first moon.

A blaze lit in the distance. The creature turned. As it did, a long bent shape formed perpendicular to its body, walking with stagger under the heavy load. One it had carried for far too long.

“Who goes there at the moon’s wax?”

Three sentries stood, illuminated by fire at their fronts, their clothes simple, elegant in white pants. Undinia from their knees to tapered waists, wrapped tight with the white hatachs hiding blades and ammo. They were shirtless, and the tebris of their abdominal folds rose high and inflated with the warning of the approaching couple. They were brown and gold skinned, copper veinage separating their scales, tall, armed with thick poles ended in curving spikes. Each had tethers of soft cord attached to the ends by reinforced metal cuppers and greaves from hand to across the shoulders, protected by thick leather padding, a halter that diagonally spanned smooth, trained chests, holding rifles on their backs. Their muscles flexed and twitched as though skittish beasts with thin skins and the built inner flesh prepared to run, either at their approaching guests or away to warn their treasach they were protecting.

“Sousan. . . Bring me to Nelwyn Sousan.”

The figures at the top of the dune came down. Only one carried the other. Rolled in a carpet, drenched with stain—red threads, gold threads, navy black threads—the figure came to a stop and laid down the roll with its contents at their feet.

His dress was Kerhasi in garb, stained with dark blood, so it was difficult at first to see what colors he truly wore, where he was from.

“Aya!—it is a rug from the Craig,” one sentry warned, his dark brown, orange striated tebris filling. His pole struck out, the barbed end pointing at the recognizable pattern in the carpet’s threading upon the front of its roll.

“Did you kill someone and bring them to lay blame on our treasach? Start a war?” The second sentry accused the traveler, popping his chin out and boasting a dark, split set of scales both smooth and strong.

“She is my sister,” the traveler rasped. “She took her life, but she is with child.”

“The child—Is it dead?” The third sentry asked with sensitivity. He moved further into the light, studying the green and yellow patak beneath the Kerhasi hood.

He could see kelp green sea eyes inspecting him. The bottom of the Drell’s face was lightly matched to that of the darker coloring upon his brown scales.

“Please,” Cuillean beseeched them. “Take me to the compound. I have to try to save the child. It was her last wish—And the child is hiriwa,” he cautiously added.

The others conversed amongst themselves, and the first sentry spoke.

“Hiriwa to what? I’m hiriwa, but I don’t own land and spread seed.” The others chuckled. “Any hiriwa means nothing to the Sousan.”

“This hiriwa will.” Seeing they would not let him pass without more information, he calmly stated: “The child is Kratos blood.”

The sentries fell silent, their looks of alarm heightening their faces.

“This is the truth?” The third sentry asked.

Cuillean, dressed in his stained garb, picked up the still form hidden among the roll of carpet.

“Let the child be saved, and we will find out surely.” He stepped towards them, slowly going but steady in his pathway by the fire. The sentries made no move to stop him. One, in fact, bent to check the straps on his hatach and the bottoms of his undinia, grabbing anklets and soles for his feet to put on.

Sand slid over sand beneath Cuillean’s heavy footsteps.

“Two more miles until the compound, Drell. Who are you, so we may send word ahead for the matriarch?” This Drell bounced on the balls of his feet, testing his spry joints and muscles in preparation for the sprint ahead.

Cuillean gazed off towards the mountains, where low and yet high before them another beacon emerged from the darkness. His dark eyes sucked in the light as hope flickered and waned at first, gradually glowing brighter.

“Tell her Cuillean comes.”

He hung his head in prayer, hoping it was not too late for his nephew. The salt breeze to his eastern shoulder ruffled his hood and pulled at the flames he left behind.

Soon there were only two sentries standing guard by the fire, white and dark shadows looking not to the horizon the beacon guarded, but in towards the compound, the land of Nuru.The home of the Sousan.


	8. Chapter 8

The hallway was dark but for a single light coming through an arched doorway. The arch was tall, narrow, and was partly blocked by a closing door.

It slowed and held ajar.

The stones were dark but for the warm slat of light, bent as cast behind the door from the warmth of the room. The hall stretched on into the darkness, its walls curving, then straight to meet the floor covered in rush. There were tables with pots of water, stiff looking flowers and twigs and tapestry between these.

A robed figure appeared and hurried down the hall, carrying a wide basin full of steaming water. Behind followed another robed figure, carrying towels, head bobbing as they hastened.

“Here!”

The door suddenly opened as the figures stopped to face it, the dark brown of their robes bathed in light that spilled out. They were hooded with large, wide cowls, and dipping these hoods, went inside the room. The door held open, then slowly, slowly began to close.

A baby’s shrill cry reached the hall and traveled down the corridor. It undulated, high and low, pausing and starting.

The door abruptly widened again, a tall, brawn figure striding out.

Only to be stopped by a second figure who placed a shadowed hand, controlling, on the first’s bigger shoulder, covered in darker robes.

The eyes flashed back the light from the room as a determined, dangerous yet thoughtful face honed on the one behind him.

“Cuillean. . . Come. Now is not the time for revenge.”

The big shoulder tensed, rising, then fell. The opening in the cowl turned away. The tips of his dark green nose and even darker green lips with the prominent chin of handsomeness could be seen with the lighter tint of his brow.

“Do you think he knew?” His voice was low, calm.

A hand of gold fell away.

“I think he wouldn’t have cared, had he. . . And Dahna wouldn’t have told him. You said she did this to free you.”

The lips parted, closed, and tightened.

“Come back inside, Cuillean. You should hold your nephew.”

The hood turned, exposing his face to the light. Pain, grimness, resolution fixed on it. The lips tight in a pensive line. His brow tipped, nodding for the figure to lead in.

After the door, a table was met with a white sheet laid across it. It formed over the head and shape of a long body. The surface of the sheet was laid with the stitched crossing of a circle, red figures bound in gold, threaded through with silver vineage intricately stitched into the blood red character. Cuillean stopped by the middle of the table and laid his large hand on the firm form beheath. The fibers felt crisp under his palm. He willed that the figure might move, but knew that was a foolish thought.

The little coughs from a tiny throat stirred his attention towards the middle of the room. There was an orb of light where a fire should be, the hearth clear of debris and ash as it hovered in place, casting out a warm glow by which to see. The mantle around it was large, carved with sharp, geometric angles, and above it were large, flat bowls made of silver, gold, on either side of a massive one. This contained a bluish silver hue, oily in its appearance, but were one to touch it, no mark would be left and no residual removed. In the center of its reflection, a white bundle was raised, emerging at the end of it a sky blue form with black banding, held in the hands of a figure garbed in white.

Cuillean looked from the bowl’s reflection to the white robed drellahna cradling the bundle, a basin of water filled with the tints of afterbirth and blood alone by her hip. Two other white robed drellahna were there on the other side of the basin, holding their hands together low, apart from one and other. A black robed figure in the darkest corner behind them, looked on.

All were focused on the small survivor in the drellahna’s arms.

She looked up as the dark robed Drell, Cuillean, came to stand in front of she holding the babe. A tint of gold fabric at his neck, crimson, white, hidden beneath the dark robing.

His arms lifted, palms turning over, and the drellahna offered to him the bundle.

The blue and black head with its butter soft plates tightly held together, soft as padding, barely filled his palm. Small lips, petals, delicately lined by the parting of scales that would inevitably harden together and spread across its face as the child developed. Large eyelids remained closed over bulbous eyes, the soft patak sucking into gaunt cheeks as the mouth opened and shut. The small face turned towards his yellow and green thumb as Cuillean rubbed the pad of his thick finger against the fine, small folds of a tebris along his nephew’s jaw, red, blue, nearly purple.

He could feel its lips brush his thumbpad, opening and closing, searching for food.

Cuillean’s brow scales squeezed downward. Two tears fell from both eyes each.

“His name is Malcham Kratos.” His voice resonated deep in the birthing room, thunder to the child. “He will have to be named something else. . . For his own protection. . . Nelwyn.” He addressed her without looking from the fragile blue rib cage, fanged with black finger stripes, expanding and thinning with first breaths of life in open air. A tiny hand waved in a slow, rhythmic cycle with the other, finger nubs experimentally flexing.

“I assign him to you.”

She stood with the dark robe around her shoulders, exposing white underneath. Her crests were golden, eyes vivid and green. She was shorter than he, Cuillean being the tallest in the room at eight feet. Her robe sleeves joined together, hiding the hold of her hands.

“I have a daughter of my own, Cuillean.”

“I cannot keep him.”

She firmly set her lips together. His boots lifted and fell as he turned.

“I call on your debt to me. A life for a life.”

Her gold chin raised, the carve of scales exposing a brilliant, violet tebris along her neck and jaw. The coiled crests threaded through her tebris and binding elegantly and close to her skull were a halo of crown.

“You are a friend, Cuillean, but having this child here will threaten the treasach if it is found he exists and who his true parents are.”

“Please, Nelwyn. Melanctha is due to have my son in three months’ time. I cannot raise this child. My work for Bor will put us at risk if he is discovered. If questions are asked, I cannot lie and say Melanctha had twins. And she cannot have children three months apart. It will be known Malcham is not hers. Bor realizes I do not sleep with any other besides my mitali.”

Silence filled the space between them. Behind Nelwyn, two burrell, garbed in white wraps over their brawn chests, bound by hatach over flared white undinia, stood with pronged knives, sabeeha, hooked at each waist. Sabers were clutched in their hands at rest, curved blades pointed downwards to the floor before them. The same colored eyes, golden brown, stared ahead while they listened.

“You have hara here. You could say he’s the child of one.”

“This child is a very dangerous weapon.” She had come forward, sandals gliding over the stone. Her hands spread apart to raise for the child, asking.

Cuillean handed the baby into her white folds. A gold finger nibbed with a pale nail traced the soft curves of the mouth, and was stopped from its departure as a tiny blue hand with black rings on its fingers grasped her fourth digit and held. The small elbow extended as the hand followed her digit, but the child prevented her, bending the elbow to draw it back.

A hungry mouth closed upon her scales.

A smile graced her full, heart-shaped lips.

“Aya, he’s strong.”

Cuillean stared at the little hand holding Nelwyn’s finger.

A small tongue poked out to lick.

“If I take him,” her eyes did not leave the little face, “you will make an oath to me.”

_One day it will free you._

His sister’s words repeated in his head, her red eyes closing in his mind.

“I must serve Kratos. I am bound.”

“You will serve both, and you will protect us from him. This is my offer.”

“Dahna did this to free me. If I am dually bound, how will this honor her sacrifice?”

Nelwyn’s smile lingered. “This child will break your bonds, Cuillean. Eventually. First he must grow. He will compete and marry, for he is strong. A survivor. Much will be fulfilled as promised.I assure you, as sooleawa. . . But you still have oaths to fulfill.”

Cuillean met her gaze. The front of his robes expanded with a deep breath.

“I give you my arm in exchange for the life of this secret I charge to your care.”

She turned her golden patak to the figure that had remained hidden in the darkest corner of the room. The conjoined fingers of her right hand raised.

“Show my barrin your left bachir.”

Cuillean obediently turned left as the figure glided forth.

A knife appeared in a dark fist of purple.

A finger with a hooked claw arose as Cuillean lowered his hood with both hands, revealing the raised ridge of fine fringe scale behind the rear upper curve of his tebris. His bachir was hidden by a soft fold of scale.

The finger rose to lift this, stretching the tender skin beneath, and the blade knicked twice the sign of the kostenka, a curved cross turning clockwise.

It bled next to an older scar, one just as similar.

“You bear this secret on your flesh, thane. Keep it hidden. One of true skill may never be discovered, not without the removal of this scale. Only then will the double mark of a diallo be found."

Cuillean did not flinch at the cuts, nor the label of traitor.

The hooded Drell, dressed in black robe with thin, jagged red stitching coursing through the front fold of his hood, retreated the knife within his right sleeve. The purple hand reemerged with a red cloth to wipe the blood off Cuillean’s bachir. Then the ancient accountant lowered the scale.

“You are marked to us now. A thane of both Sousan and Kratos treasachs.”

The word for ‘assassin’ conjured pride and chagrin. Cuillean raised the hood over his head as the barrin moved backwards, returning to his corner to record by eye, ear, smell, and permanent memory.

“Your oath has been recorded by my barrin, Beinean, and will be kept secret from the Hyrrokkin Dior. You may go at your leisure, Cuillean Kiross. I wish your wife a healthy pregnancy."

“You will take care of my sister?”

The white sheet with its form underneath laid out behind Nelwyn’s dark garb.

“Come back in two days’ time. She will be prepared for pyre and you may see her ashes go to the sun, as well as check on the health of your nephew.”

Cuillean nodded, once. He took his leave then, sweeping towards the doorway, robes barely skirting stone. His imposing figure moved, silent, into the darkness of the hall, and he turned left to be swallowed by the corridor.

Nelwyn Sousan dropped her gaze from the entrance of the chamber to the child still holding her knuckle.

The large eyelids slowly raised, and blood red eyes secreted out, jewel rubies etched with silk strands meeting around black, deep pupils.

Nelwyn cursed under breath.

“Beinean!” Her voice whipped in authority. “Contact the Hanari. We will need the treatments to hide this one’s eyes. He is undeniably Dahna’s child, Bor’s bannon. No one is to leave this room until you all have renewed your oaths to me. You will also make oaths to the new hiriwa.”

“What will be his name, nefen?” One of the drellahna midwives spoke.

“I will name him after my grandfather.” Nelwyn smiled, the harshness leaving her fine features. “I will name him Drewe.”


	9. Chapter 9

The woods stretched high over the clearing, dark and green. Brown grass up to the knees slowly waved.

There was a cottage, low, one level, with windows along the northern wall. A door to the eastern corner. Smoke emerged from an opening in its roof, pitched with logs and a clay drawn from the deeper sands found at its clearing in its early beginnings. There was mist beyond the cottus standing alone in that wood, and a well-worn path led to the door. Racks stood at angles against the exterior, hanging strips of material, dark, some paper thin. There were flowers left in baskets hung from the top of the logs poking through the line of roof, and above were more baskets, their fillings unclear. The windows were glass, cleaned, and a figure in white garb, tan and brown coloring, could be seen moving east towards the door, busying herself with nighttime tasks. She stopped between two windows, non-visible for a moment, until she bent forward to attend something below the midlevel frame. For a second, her face turned to the window closest the door, a worried look on her delicate portrait through the glass.She had a small nose, petite chin, and wide yet modest flares of crest close to her neck.

The path winding up was brown, mixed with yellow silts. Nothing meticulous, just worn, and littered with the travels of their feet. Cuillean remembered walking Melanctha to the home he had built with his hands, and she had entered the cottus, not a peep about how provincial it was. Serepta did not live in high cottuses. He only frequented the guarded, affluent compounds of the higher tierras if he was bidden for special tasks. Handsomely paid, they could live well, but residing on the outskirts of the forbidden valley of Alpana, where only Cuillean knew safe paths to tread, it would be unwise and unsafe to display any richness outside a fortified compound.

Faces could sometimes be seen among the trees, watching the paths for those who entered. They would disappear. Sometimes with whoever came into the woods.

The trees reached high, dark leaves silently caressing one and other while the wind slanted the stream of thin smoke coming from the roof. Cuillean felt the grass blades along the bottoms of his fingertips as he waded through the reeds to reach the clearing before his cottus. Dampness was in the air. So was night. Near, off in the woods at the edge of the clearing, he detected the tread of footsteps running south and west.

_The Borhala are always watching._

The door had a tarnished metal knob that he turned, big enough to fit in his grip. He looked left into the trees, right, then pushed and stepped through into the warm glow.

Melanctha saw a tired thane, a wear to his brow scales and patak on the tall Drell coming forth into their home. She placed down a jar full of wooden pins the length of her hands and stepped fleetly across the floor to greet him.

“Cuill,” she said, using her nickname for him, her mitali and lover for five years, “where have you been? I was worried when you didn’t return this morning.”

Her belly bumped his through the white mannaan she wore and his travelwear. Cuillean unslung his pack from his shoulder, a long bag fitting his rifle and holding a Kerhasi uniform. He put his hand upon her patak and caressed this down to her tebris. His other hand, covered in an open fingered glove, fell to her belly, relatively flat, but firm with the shape of child inside. His green and dark travel clothes pooled around his feet as he knelt and kissed her form through the mannaan, and rising with his hands about her waist, he brushed her lips with his own, thrumming from his belly an affectionate greeting. Melanctha’s eyes closed for the kiss, reveling in the care and attention he always bestowed her. Every time he stepped from the cottus, she understood that it was possible she would never see him again. As her eyelids parted, the inner pink lining widening as both upper and lower lids, yellow brown, glided back, she saw his dark eyes closing, his big head bent, the smooth tiles around his neck looking heavy on him. Melanctha gathered the robe thrown over his shoulders in her brown and soft hands. She threaded these to the front clasp, hidden among the folds of garment. A gold medallion curved outwards as a shallow bell, and beneath, a strong pin was set into a loop. She expertly flicked this, detaching it as she had done so many times before, and carried the robe off his shoulders. Parting from him only to lay down the robe, she looked at Cuillean in his green and yellow sunburnt clothes. They were dark, lacking any brightness, swallowed into a darker layering of fabric that helped to hide him in the wood, and could be removed to blend him in the desert’s yellow sands.

Cuillean was a giant of a Drell, but in his current condition, with the downcast pensiveness of his lips and mouth instead of his regular joviality, he seemed lesser. Cuillean had an easy and handsome face that was always relaxed and quick to smile, at least with she, and his present state was something concerning, even considering his particular variety of skills.

“Do you remember where we met, Melanctha?”

Her brown scale above her eye twitched. She had her head bent back to look into his face, both palms on the white of a shirt she found hidden beneath his layers. She could feel the smoothness of his chest against the tip of one of her fingers that had pressed through the parting of clothes.

“It was in the Crandal. The color of the espowyes was white under the sun. There were stained rugs on the ground. You were eating a backstere at a bazi on the corner of the Craig and market. I could see you staring at me when I came from the stalls selling sandals. You were smiling,” she chuckled. “I thought you were going to buy all of my stock that day.”

There it was. Finally. The smile. His teeth were a fresh brightness behind his dark and yellow lips. Cuillean had ever been clean and meticulous about his hygiene. Most Serepta were dirty, lacking access to simple luxuries and sanitation, but Cuillean was cut from a curious cloth. It made her wonder. There was a stream of water nearby, and he always had sealed tubs of it stored around back for convenience. There was medicine and fire at hand. He insisted they always have wood to burn, and to boil what they drank. He provided cleaning utensils for both of them, as well as for his own separate guns and blades.

“I was looking at you, how bella you were.”

The word for beautiful made her tebris flush darker orange against her throat and jaw.

“I did not think anyone found me bella.”

“You never looked up from your hands, bella.”

She did these days, whenever Cuillean was around. He had that effect on her, making her want to look up from the labors of her hands. Otherwise, she preferred to hide herself from the world and only to be seen when she visited the markets to sell her products. Not that anyone paid her attention besides Cuillean. Few cared for her color, more especially that she was Serepta like he, but Cuillean had seen the quality in her and found her more beautiful than any drellahna born of Tyrannus or Illori Tierras.

A spot of blood behind his tebral chutes drew her gaze. Melanctha turned and picked up a handcloth from her table, on which spread arrays of various jars, knick knacks, stitchings of shoes, stripes of thick cording, and panels for sandals.

“Cuill, you’re bleeding!”

He gently caught her wrist, took the handcloth from her fingers, and laid it on the table. Melanctha retrieved it again, not to be deterred. Her fingers lifted the scale above his bachir to chase the source of blood.

When she saw the second set of cuts on the reddish pink skin, she stilled in her movements, blinking with startled eyes.

“Cuillean. . . What does this mean?”

The knots of raised skin from the old slashes marking his debt to a sponsor were normal for her. To see the second new set, not only did it mean someone had managed to touch him, but that he was now working for two sponsors. A sharp blade of fear cut through her.

“What have you done. . . What would make you take on a second sponsor?” Her fingers folded into his shirt, knuckles tight and smooth. The handcloth tumbled. Cuillean laid his hands over hers. “How could you do this, Cuillean Kiross? And to our child? He will have to bear the oaths for dual loyalties! And if two marks are seen. . .”

Cuillean stooped to pick up the handcloth and return it to the table over one of her jars. He then took her with him through the small cottus to stand in front of their hearth.

“We live simply,” he began, “but we have wealth because of these marks, Melanctha.” The fire gleamed off his skin. She could only stare at his face and the spot of blood on the back of his fringe. “Our wealth must be hidden so that none think we are tempting enough to steal from.”

“Why have you taken on a second sponsor.”

She regretted how coldly accusing her statement sounded. Cuillean held his lips tight, gaze reflecting the fireplace. He summoned his next breath of words.

“My wealth has ever been in family.”

Melanctha’s tension lessened. She squeezed his palm with hers, which he still held onto.

“I am only one. . . Soon to be two, I hope.”

She glanced at the folds of parted fabrics of his shirts, the gleam of his muscle exposed upon his chest. A strong heartbeat she had listened to on the nights they lay together and he had no work requiring him to be anywhere else. Her gaze moved upward, and she found him looking at her. A large hand from his right moved to her mouth and he swept her upper lip with his thumb. She could see tears in his eyes. Alarmed, she reached up, removing her hand from his to hold his patak between her palms. Her arms were thin, but strong, a dancer’s litheness and strength in one who sewed footwear and sold it for a meager living.

“Cuillean, tell me what has happened while you were away for Bor. I can tell something pains you. . . I have never seen you so sorrowful.”

His hand moved to her wrist and held it, seeking strength in her as he closed his eyes with a heavy sigh.

“I never told you why I was at the Crandal that day, Melanctha. Years ago, I met a thief there, in that very espowyes where I saw you. I killed him, but it was an accident. Back then, I was young and inexperienced with my strength. The death of that Drell changed my world, and my family’s.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A/N]: There is a significant amount of dialogue using vernacular among the culture. I have defined the terms briefly in parentheses and italics next to each initial use. I do not feel it will disrupt the story flow, and it restricts to one paragraph of dialogue.

The two cornered blade cut, biting through yellow and gold fiber, pulling out _shuck!_ as sky beyond the trees lined with river and the end of yellow soil bared before the blade hacked in again. Sighing each stroke, in and out, the silver tipped blade hewed its path through the outer ring and into the darker heart of the tree. The cuts were smooth with some fraying, to be expected with an axe, but the blade bit with ease, wedging its way ever inward. The air in the woods of Thorolf were shaded and cool. Leaves shook and fell. The light opened and closed from the view of the heart’s inner core. She toppled and fell, fibers _ripping, popping, snapping_ as the pillar of trunk could bear its weight no longer. The axe drew away, a singing voice calling in deep basso mixed with the tremble of chords.

The tree was dragged away through the wood to the next station. One dark felt boot fell over its carcass, blending with the bark, and branches were hewn in swift, solid strokes. Each blade arced up and down, culling off those branches for a pile nearby, the trunk being hacked upon by a second blade.

Green eyes rimmed with yellow gold came up to look ahead the fallen tree, and a young, rugged youth growing into his mid teen years was affected by a smile.

“This yevtsye wood will bring in a good amount of monet at the bazil, father.”

A Drell leaning up from a lodged cut into the tree top ahead, his boot and leg raised on the trunk, solemnly gazed over his clothed shoulder of garnet thread and lapis blue. Tugging the axe free, he swung it in an arc, gracefully passing it from his right into his left, shaking it at the other.

“Mind you,” the Drell spoke in a strong voice, his dark lips so green they were almost purple, “stay to the cart and don’t you go wander. The Crandal is not a place to go touring on your own. And stay away from the drellahna,” he added an emphatic disapproval to his tone, nodding as if this were sound advice.

“I will, father,” his son replied, swinging the axe in his left hand, meeting the right to his grip, and hewing off a branch as thick as his arm.

A white drellahna watched the pair from a stone doorway, part of a two level cottus overlooking the river. There were platforms above for looking out to see what was traveling on the water, and to look beyond the trees.

“Dahna’s up.”

The older Drell lodged his axe into the wood and turned his head about on his neck, red and yellow tebris stretching. “Dahna,” his voice raised to cross the twenty meters to the cottus, “you coming with us this time?”

“No, papa,” the sweet, contralto voice lifted to meet their teness. “I am still not feeling well. Maybe next time I will make the visit to the Crandal with you and Cuillean.”

Their father shook his head, the wider flares of his bachir sliding over the thickly developed muscles on his back. He drew the axe head from the wood, sliding his hands into place along the dark, smooth handle. “I don’t understand why she’s always so sick,” he rumbled, commencing another swing, engaging the wood, tugging it out before adding, “I swear she does it to avoid the Craig and she’s never been. Her mother was never so often sick. Once and that was it. . . Consistent, Dahna is.”

“Dahna doesn’t like the attention she thinks she will attract. You know mother was always warning her. About how valuable ‘Tyrannus this’ and ‘Ilori that’ she is.”

The older Drell frowned, a darkening curve of his pleated lips. “I’d never let anyone get close enough to her. Not even the govannon. They wouldn’t dare try to impose on us unless they had a good reason.” He turned his face to the fallen tree, seeing the needles and leaves among blue veiny branches. “Your mother did say to protect Dahna before she passed from that cursed plague.”

“The Kris made many nervous about the futures of their hiriwa, father. Everyone knows how bella one such as Dahna would be to those who ever saw her. . . Why don’t we send her to the Kerhasla since she’s bound to go the way of the sisterhood.”

The axe thunked into the tree and remained pointed by handle at a sixty degree angle. His same colored eyes looked back at him, the old Drell pointing a conjoined set of fingers. “You never give her to those drellahna, do you understand? They’re the ones that brought plague to your mother.”

“She went to help them.”

The old Drell fell silent, connecting to his own thoughts on groups he disapproved.

Taking a glance at the doorway where his sister watched still, a smile on her shimmery pearl lips, the young Drell took another swing at the wood, splintering the trunk in two.

Lift, strike, lift, hew. The axes fell and as his father had taught him and his father before, the woodcutters made their way into synchronic harmony, axes spiraling, lopping off branches. The tree was about fifty feet tall, making it safe for one to line at his end of the tree and swirl his bar of wooden handle, careening through the old ancient for the wood they would need to sell at the market miles away. Left, right, spinning through the wood, the blades hacked and gleamed, picking up flashes through the trees that shied from their canopy, light that was warm above and cool below. Shuffling their boots alongside the newly trimmed trunk, they cleared the rest of the branches, confident dances among their tools, limbs, and hands.

The bark was split, the trunk hewn. Wood was splintered, lopped in two and then three. A greyed wooden cart was intricately loaded with detailed wooden cords, moving higher and higher until the pile came above the wooden rails. The beams were thick and square, not round and shakily built as others. The hand of the Kiross was known throughout Thorolf as strong and fine-tuned as a musician’s. They could make the wood and blades they used dance with their whittling, chunkling, and carpentering. Yevtsye heart was rich and warm, and would find a kind price at the bazil in the wide plazas, the espowyes, of the Crandal surrounding the Craig.

And they were Tyrannus, which would not hinder them from reaching the higher purses of the Terje Tierra, an archaic social system governing the roles and rights of families for Drell east of the Bearchan, the ocean dividing the continents they knew.

Dust clouded from the clap of large, knotted hands as father and son cleaned their palms to accept drinks of floral hot water from the special drellahna come from the cottus. She wore a tan yellow shawl as thin as canvas over her white, embroidered mannaan, flowers of teresha and vines of its cousins winding through the hem, along her neck and down past her sternum as was the fashion for her species. The oils of her pearlescent skin gleamed with a turn of her crests and a tebris deeper than blood. Her eyes were just as red, but defined against the whites without blur. Fine black markings swept along her inner eyelids, but that was the only color her genes allowed. Black was yet as colorless as white among the albinoids of Rakhana.

“Dahna, are you sure you will stay behind?” Her father had drunk and now held his cup, other elbow leaning over the cart rail. His next of kin had gone to fetch the dilean, a large rooker that had two more in a den out behind the cottus.

“Me father, I will stay.” Her voice was a smile and a whisper, but loud enough for him to hear clear.

“You intend not to entertain visitors again?” he guardedly reproached.

“Only a sister, father.”

She demured at his scrunching of scales over his eyes.

“The Kerhasla?” He poked his face at her. “You know I don’t like them coming around here.”

“Would you rather I invite a Borhala?”

“No,” was his curt reply. “Leave the ruffians alone. If you need company whilst I’m away, I’d prefer the Kerhasla. I begrudge them that.”

“Papandrou,” she blinked and opened her clear eyelids. “They will never touch an Ilori. The Borhala are sworn to protect we of the tierra.”

“That’s all legend.” He handed his cup back to her, and gently holding her shoulder, the cloth crushing beneath the weight of his hand, he guided his daughter to the cottus as around the left yard came her brother, guiding the leads attached to a creature with red and blue mane like silken strands of feathers, clustered over a long neck, at the end of which a white scaled face with hooked black claw walked on hands and legs tipped in long thin toes ending in black curved talons. The body was covered in fur, red and yellow, and she was fourteen hands from foot to shoulder, the head rising another eight. It huffed through its hard, oval nostrils, and round orbital eyes widened gold irises at the offer of a hand to rub its furry chest and feathered throat. The dilean was solid beneath her soft façade.

“Remember, if any thing happens while we are away—“

“Take the tunnels, I know.” She smiled at him and turned her face towards her brother. “Come back to me, my love.”

He rolled his eyes.

The rooker butted her chest and arm, Dahna resting her hand upon its soft crown and giggling. Looking up at both father and sibling, she touched their pentagonal brow scale each with her conjoined finger tips, praying in her head as she did so that she would see their return. Each took her in their arms for a goodbye embrace, and leading the rooker to hook up to the cart, they passed the wide wheels made of seamless wood and flared to cover wider ground, not be trapped in ruts. Dahna waved them go as she went from the cottus door to round the left of the cottus, where she found a Drell as black as night waiting for her with blood red eyes. She greeted him with a touch of her head scale and left shoulder, and the Drell stood from his perch on a water barrel to take her hand and walk her to the twin dilean kids waiting in a wide pen out back.

While Dahna met with her guest, Cuillean and his father boarded the back of the cart and slid their hands along the rails to move towards the dilean in front, a great dark yoke curved above her back and notched with thick ropes woven by the Drell themselves. These attached to the sides of the cart, which rumbled as the dilean strove forward, carrying the massive loading. The old Drell took out a thin whip on a stiff reed as long as he was tall, and tickled the dilean under her jaw to tease her. She trode, but clacked her maw at the whip tail, trying to catch it as it flicked away with his wrist’s control.

“You will have to protect your sister when I am gone, Cuillean. Never let the Hyrrokkin Dior find out about her, nor any from the Kerhasi. They will want her for their needs and I can’t rest a spirit if I see she is being mishandled.”

“I will take care of her, father. My word—”

“Is only as good as your sense,” his father reminded with a proper jerk of jaw. “You are strong and you are growing still. I have taught you much, more than my father taught me, but you are still foolish sometimes when you forget your power. You must control it always. Strength is a fine tool, but if not carefully applied, shall destroy even that which you wish not to.” The Drell looked ahead through the sparsing trees, hoping to see the great rock of the Craig in the distance, her auburn tones driving above the white Crandal. “I am proud of you. Were your mother here to see you grow. . .”

“Thank you, father. I will do my best,” Cuillean absently said, his gaze on the rocks and soil below his feet. His arms had a nice burn from the work that morning, and he was looking forward to walking through the desert dunes outside the Crandal.

They would cover two miles of woods, bumping along with the rooker, named Kalare for ‘bright’, not only because of her color, but because dilean were clever and bold. They could use their claws as hands, and manipulate doors and tools. Most were feral, having escaped domesticity because of their cleverness, but there were breeds of herds more stupid and foul, meant for their meats and milk. Kalare’s shifting shoulder muscles bumped against her left companion, and Cuillean grinned upwards at the doting look only a rooker could bestow and share upon her master.

She also knew he had food.

Reaching into the dark brown hatach at his waist, he pulled out a wrapped bundle of cloth, unfolded the leaves partway either side in his palm with green fingers, and moved these to collect the crisp, dried meat known as flor, which he had taken from the river fishing one day. He had prepared it himself with seasoning of spice, and handed this to a waiting claw of a mouth that clipped it, flipped upwards, and soundlessly swallowed, leaning back for more.

“Stop distracting her because you’re leading the cart left, Cuillean.”

“Sorry, father.” Cuillean winked at Kalare. “Not another one for you. You heard the old Drell.”

Kalare’s head careened to the other side of the cart, and not a moment later did his teness detect a clack and a curse.

The sun rose higher, and both Drell and their dilean were walking with the cart on their left, the old Drell holding a tether around Kalare’s head and mouth. Cuillean had watched his father put it on her, and was frowning as he walked alongside his father, occasionally glancing up at the halter.

“You degrade her by putting that on her face. She doesn’t like it.”

“You’ll like it less if she nips one of the druce guarding the city, or fights another dilean trying to mate with her. It’s for her own safety,” his father said in repulse.

“Mithra would have never made something so fine and intelligent only to be cupped and mawed.”

“Mithra would have never made the Kerhasi then,” his father replied, “but the Kerhasi exist for a reason. To protect from the Siuaghan across the seireadan ( _untamed ocean_ ), and from the zhen ( _foreigners_ ) that come from the kosme ( _skies beyond_ ). Woundable we would be if not for the standing druce ( _army of multiple barra, individual armies owned by clans_ ) donated by each of the treasachs ( _tribes_ ). We owe them much for governing peace and preserving this country, and all it encompasses.”

“I hear the Kratos are ascended to governorship now.”

“Yes, and Bor Kratos is clever and good for us. His hiriwa will be strong and formidable should he ever choose a mitali to plant seed with.” He adjusted his grip on the rope holding Kalare’s head, the wagon wheels grating onward as the high whir of a land skimmer shot by, blowing up yellow dust at them. The Drell aboard it were dark and grim looking. None of them paid the Drell and their dilean on the road any thought as the flat, rectangular ugliness of the skimmer made straight away, cresting a rise, and floating beyond their view in the same direction they were going.

They were surrounded by rocks and dunes, the trip through Thorolf now on the boundary of the Umay, lands leading into the central government’s territory of the Kerhasi. The old Drell sighed as the dust settled, clearing from their eyes, and Kalare snorted, spraying out dust and mucus.

“How come you have not sent me to join the druce, father?”

“Because we are clanless, and so we are free.”

“But aren’t the bannon—“

His father abruptly stopped, Kalare mindfully coming to heel. His hooded eyes were thin rectangles staring at his son.

“Clanless does not mean bannon. Bannon is the heirless, and those who are born out of wedlock. Heirless does not mean infertile, but those forbidden to breed and branch away from the tree. Do you understand, Cuillean? If I forbade you from laying with a drellahna, and you went against my wishes and laid as well as seeded, your child would be bannon as there is no mark approved by myself or the Hyrrokkin Dior. His children would be bannon, were he fortunate to breed. Do you understand?”

“Why are we clanless?”

The wind picked up silt and blew it against their clothes.

“We are free Drell, Cuillean. We owe our service to none because of our tierra. We could choose to expand if we wished and call a barra to us. We choose to live isolated and sovereign as we are small and can. Were we larger, we would be required to submit some of our burrell to the druce.” His chin lifted, exposing yellow, to look at Kalare as he tugged her rope and stroked the cheek beneath her eye feathers with the tip of the whip. Alongside him, his son fell into step and they continued on. After a time, “Leave it to the Turi to be called on and protect Ilori Tierra. The Tramaine to fill the barra and fight our wars. The Tyrannus to rule and lead the treasachs, those who are willing and interested in power. And forbid Serepta from ever rising against the hands that recruit them for their fellness and vile use. There are castes for a reason, son, and each has its purpose. Everyone knows where they belong and what to do.”

“If we are Tyrannus Ilori, why are you not, as patriarch, meeting with the others during tribunal?”

“Because I do not want enemies,” his father said, gazing ahead. Blue sky was beyond his nose, yellow sand beneath his jaw. Kalare’s bright feathers framed the back of his head and the crestal horns following a column down his skull. “Kiross is a very powerful name, thanks to your mother. It inspires envy from those we do not wish to ire. I have already lost my wife and your mother. I do not wish to lose you or Dahna to anymore tragedy.”

“But mother died of the Kris.”

He shook his crest. “If we had lived in the Crandal, I would have had to serve in the Kerhasi. Whether I wanted to or not, Drell would have flocked to me because of your mother’s last name. . . Lela. I never told you this, but you are descended from great warriors. Lela was a well-respected treasach, and the family is said to have disappeared due to murder by those who felt them a threat. We live in isolation where we can feed ourselves and make a living unharassed but for the Borhala who are ever a nuisance but no danger, and the Kerhasla who think they owe us some type of debt. . .We keep to ourselves and do not present alarm to any that might be Govannon or Govannon hopeful. We also never talk to anyone about our family, Cuillean. It is a blessed line, and cursed, right up there with the Drugi.”

“The Drugi? You mean the Guardians of the Ordained?”

 _Yes_ , the old Drell thought, but said no more on it. Right then, a tremulous belch came from Kalare’s posterior and both Drell winced. Cuillean sighed.

“Another thing: why have we _not_ one of those skimmers yet?” he nodded off to where the previous ride had gone.

Wafting the air before his face and beside Kalare, “Because it costs gas and fuel, which there is enough of, just not the right type,” his father finished with a slanted look at Kalare’s head above in the sky.

“Still, they look fun, though not as wonderful company as those at present.” Cuillean grinned at his father, who heaved an arm around him for a collegial squeeze and shook his shoulders, happy as a widowed Drell could be.

The sun rose another handful, and her twin could be seen crisping the horizon off to the east, where only flatlands lay and the poke of dark clouds wisped from the flat line of distant horizon. Cuillean did not see his father looking at the clouds, irregular as they were and unnatural, as though burning had created them, but not unlike regular smoke from a fire. He tentatively inhaled, but the stacked clouds were drifting north and farther east.

As they came around a low dune, the first white steps of the Crandal were seen. A rampway, shallow, led into the first espowyes, which was narrow before a wall spread from either side of an arched white gate. It was up this ramp and through the archway that the three were heading for, and other carts, low skimmers, and walking Drell and drellahna could be seen coming out, more coming from a road east and another west to enter the city’s limits. On either side of the doors, big burrell dressed in the lavish white, gold, and red costume of the Kerhasi guard stood tall and forebodingly with spears curved as corkscrews, bladed on their shines, and barbed at opposite ends. They were ceremonial and fierce, whereas the real power was slung across their backs in Javelin rifles that could fire two hundred yards. Their ridges along their temples to the back flares of thick scales behind their heads made them appear regal and respected. One was brown with a greyish-cream quality striped under the ridge among skin exposed at his cheeks. The other was black, ribbed with blue and white falling through his tebris from his patak, the joined plates of his face. Their hatachs were tight in narrow waists padded with sabeeha and sabers. They were meant to exude power and awe, and the belief that if one set foot inside the Crandal, to get out, you would have to encounter these two Drell from at least two hundred yards, the end of their bullets. Lucking out of that, contend with them face to face, arm to arm, blade to blade, if the long spiros did not stick and tear you first.

The cart with its load of wood scratched and groaned across the white, smoothed surface of the street leading through the archway and burrell. The old Drell kept a ready hand on Kalare’s tether rope, while nodding to the passing sentry, who merely glanced and nodded in return. Cuillean’s eyes were eating up the Kerhasi uniform, the size of the bulky Drell armed to the teeth, and could not help but admire, and think what it would be like to wear such honored garb.

The streets were clean, hovels more like tall cubes with symmetrical doorways and windows made of the same white stone. The sun cast a grey shade on one side of the street, and the smells of cooking meats and sweet teresha, cooling baked goods, dust and sun funneled through the open air tunnels, causing dilean and Drell to wonder and search. A dark blue dilean with black feathering around its neck and face curved around a corner home with its master a lime green Drell with yellow lickings, guiding it untethered. The dilean instinctively bobbed towards Kalare, who began to pull up on her guiding hand and tether.

“Put a leash on your animal,” Cuillean’s father snapped at the lime Drell, who looked startled as the rooker set back on her hocks and reared, exposing the talons towards the curious one. The wagon pitched forward, tilting into a V at its weight and Kalare’s pressure of position. The wood beams groaned against the force as Kalare called out in reverberating pitches of warning. The other dilean was discouraged by Cuillean’s father’s goading with his whip, the lime Drell hurriedly clipping a rope to his dilean’s collar and clucking his tongue to remind it to mind its own business. Cuillean rubbed and patted Kalare’s neck, fondling the feathers and fur until she soothed and lowered her foreclaws to the ground. His father clicked his tongue and tapped her haunches with the reed to make these rise, taking pressure off the wagon hinges, righting it back to parallel.

“You can’t guard Drell from their own stupidity,” his father warned, checking the beam work, adjusting some cords that had slid out of place and tumbled against the rails. More had fallen out of the wagon, and the Drell worked to pick up and restack, securing while Kalare agitatedly shifted her head about, frilling her neck feathers and rustling these with vexation.

“Good thing you had the halter on,” Cuillean said, but his father’s pinched face made him reconsider.

“She still has her claws, which is why we need them on the ground. You see, Cuillean? You can take precautions, but you still have to be there when trouble shows itself. We controlled it anyhow. . . I did, at least. No help from you or the other two.”

“You said to mind my own power. I saw you exerting yours.”

His father gave him a doubletake, then his face broadened into a grin. “So I did, and so you have.”

Cuillean gave him an easy smile. “You handled it well, father, I’ve no doubt.”

“Quiet, you,” his father chuckled, shoulders shaking a bit as he lifted another cord and stacked it on top. “Let’s get to the bazil and register with the Kerhasi so we can sell this and make a profit. I want to head back before nightfall. Make it home and not deal with any wuliton.”

“Dahna will light the—“

His father cupped his shoulder, eyes wide and warning as he held a finger to his lips. “How many times do I have to tell you, not to talk about family?” he said low, passing Drell walking behind Cuillean.

Cuillean raised an eye ridge and shrugged his shoulder up, palms beseeching. “I haven’t said anything that would—“

His father pointed at the windows and lining the walls of the homes running each side of the street. The lane was wide and the rooftops bare.

“Just because you don’t see anyone, doesn’t mean there aren’t spies listening, observing, Cuillean.” His father let his shoulder go, looking all too wary and picking up another cord, handing this to him with a push.

“You are so paranoid,” Cuillean softly chuckled, placing the cord with the rest of the wood and taking hold of Kalare’s tether. “Give me that reed and we’ll follow you, lest I give away any more secrets.”

“The Kerhasi are always watching, just like the Borhala,” his father whispered. “We are perfect recorders of events and faces.”

“You make it seem like we’re here for espionage.”

“Ssh. Enough. Let’s go.” He waved them to follow and turned, threads of his shirt and pants looking comfortable and dusty with the white chalk billowing about.

After what seemed a mile, the street opened into a large espowyes, and a clear view of the Craig with its goliath orange dusted rock rising ahead of them, still beyond yet more homes and shops. There were a few higher white buildings, but these were sparse and clustered closer to the Craig, what was their tongue for ‘Rock’ in the culture. Huts made of poles, wooden, hung draped blankets and curtains throughout this fair plaza, and much filtered out and spread to the perimeter or wound its way through the vendors clustered about the espowyes in random order. Close to the Craig’s side of the espowyes was a phalaksh of hundreds of white garbed Drell in red and gold, drilling in synch of artful movements. It would be interrupted with breaks to bend and pick up silver blades and wheel these gracefully from side to side, turning with controlled cuts and stepping back in balance with one leg held crooked, white pants crisp and bare colorful feet dusted. They held Cuillean’s attention as they leapt high in unison, spiraling with the blades and slashing down.

His father noticed his son looking off in the distance at the training. He tipped his crests to them.

“Thanes,” his father said.

“What?” Cuillean looked back and forth between his father’s face and the Drell. “They are not phalaksh?”

“They are the Kerhasi’s dancers. Dancers not of fest and liberty, but Drell who have been sworn into service and do the quiet work of the Kerhasi. Every one you see is trained to take life both at hand and from afar. You see them out in the open, but this is only a ritual, meant to entertain their sponsors, and assure him or her that their thanes are honed and perfected for the tasks to do in the dark. You see them now as a blazing display, fire for all to see and know exist, but when they are needed to fulfill the deeds they are training for, they vanish like smoke and move as such.”

“So they are not warriors of the druce,” he said, still watching as the thanes turned and threw up their blades, catching these in a deadly performance that did enthrall and newly began to make him fear ever meeting one in an alley somewhere. “They are weapons.”

“They are daggers in the dark, bullets from the cliffs, poison in the water. Eyes outside the light.”

“Why put them out here in full display so Drell may recognize their faces?”

“Two reasons: like a dilean raises her feathers and makes herself twice her size to let others know her presence and to be feared. The other reason being those ones are in training, and are the prime to be selected from for future assignments. Once a thane has been charged with his first mission, what have his sponsor need for, you will not see them perform in the open again, as a thane must retreat to the darkness, where no one else may see him. It is a lonely world,” his father uttered, face falling into a trance, “left to mists and receding light.”

His gaze stuttered from the performers and draggled to his father, whose stoic profile seemed to change as he gazed beyond to where he had been looking. Suddenly his father looked much older, remembering.

“How do you know so much about them?”

Eufemiusz Kiross turned his gaze to his son’s, only telling with a small, sad smile, the same he had seen Dahna give him from time to time. “One day I will tell you what a patriarch should know. As for now, you are too young to worry about such things. Let us move on.”

Cuillean looked after and followed his father with wonder. He was only fifteen, strongly versed in his father’s craft, tall and surprisingly fit for his age. He towered already beyond other Drell and had a phenomenal physique belying a youth far more matured, physically at least. But he’d only come to the Craig to dispense of the wood he and his father chucked, and much had been kept secret from him of the world outside of Thorolf. It was his father’s reservations that kept he and Dahna sheltered from what he knew, protected by ignorance, though Dahna surprised both of them as she often did know of things she shouldn’t. Cuillean and his father attributed it to the sisters of the Kerhasla who frequented the cottus when both father and son were not present, unaware of the stranger who came by when the rooker was taken with them on trips. But who knew what Dahna learned while she was left alone in Thorolf? Cuillean was a naïve youth, far more impressed by physique and strength, prowess and ability than knowledge of the stories that swirled around his life. And his father tolerated this for a reason.

Thanes kicked after leaping higher, arcing blades below them in a crescent and shouting out in a roar that shook across the espowyes all who were listening. Most traders were about their business, bobbing and nodding their heads as customers and merchants stopped to see their goods among the dark stalls and colorful curtains. Drell and drellahna haggled over prices, while Kerhasi uniforms looked on from stations at the entries to the plaza from several streets connecting it. Skimmers lowered and parked on the white surface with barely a putt or splutter, most of the metals and paneling dark and dreary compared to the immaculate stonewash. Young Drell were seen to hop over the sides of the skimmers, while others, larger and with cocky swagger raised their weight from the vehicles, sawing free of their mass. One Drell with a dark brownish-red color to his lips and face stood, bare chested, adjusting his pants and hatach. His glance about the espowyes was casual, but saw everything.

High up on the Craig, a single solid flash was seen by a waiting set of eyes.

Kalare’s fiery red head bobbed and swiveled as she crossed the white expanse, led by Cuillean and his father. Her black talons hit the stone hard, making a rhythmic clacking of each five digit forehand when she touched, the hind claw lifting off with a light scrape. Cuillean’s green crests gleamed with the light of the sun bearing down, warming him and his father’s long, broad, leather scales and clothes. Cuillean wore a light colored blue shirt with see-through sheerness revealing the darkness of his chest and abdominals. His pants were lighter grey as a stratus cloud stretching across the sky. His father was more boldly colored with a deep red and blue pattern among his shirt and cloak, his pants deep stain grey. Both wore the dark felt boots they had trode through Thorolf in, and Cuillean had a hole in his sole he would have to mend later on their return. The father and son looked strikingly alike, fit to be brothers, with Cuillean a little leaner and more bright eyed and youthful.

Farther across the espowyes, a new skimmer arrived on the plaza, moving across with some drellahna of gold and copper face. They had a trailer of round baskets as tall as a child, covered in wicker basket lids. The drellahna were regal, proud golden chins and svelte eyes, their tebris either violet or maroon. Their arms were draped over the skimmer seats, driving to park near to the exit of another street. The skimmer was orange and white with curves of fire on the design of the back fenders. The upper tierra wealth of Tyrannus was clear for those to see, that these were burrella of a very wealthy treasach. Even the youngest held a haughty look of privilege as the drellahna rose from her seat between two tall, athletically armed burrella, copper on each side of her golden arms. They were not dressed in the whimsical attire of dress nor skirt, but dark brown leathers, and the youngest in a snowy grey. The uniforms were trim around their slender waists and chests, loose in folds above mid ankle and dark up to sculpted shoulders. Many would think them dancers like the thanes performing nearby. The drellahna paid no mind to the dancing trainees, and walked around the skimmer to lift two each of the big baskets and carry these by handles down an alley along the street leading towards the monolith of the Craig.

Two lovers in an alley off to the right of their cart were deep in each other’s throats, roughing each other’s clothes in the quiet seclusion of shade beneath overhanging tarps and having started behind empty crates, but pushing one into the opposite wall as the drellahna hitched her leg up. Cuillean’s eyes were notsomuch drawn to the sudden scuffle of revealed passion, but before that, to the sense that there was something happening. He gazed upon the lover committing his first thrust into the drellahna, and couldn’t stop watching as they brazenly made love in the narrow corridor providing them secrecy by being out in the open. Her crests, streaked with white, orange, brown and yellow, turned to the side as her mate pressed his nose against her fringe, orange lips parted as he surely was gripped in the pleasure throes himself.

“I’m going to check with the regulatory,” his father said, glancing at the alley and then at his son. “Can I trust you to stay here with Kalare and make sure no cords are stolen?”

Cuillean tore his eyes off the tryst and looked at his father, green patak expressionless. “I’ll go and wait over there,” he nodded to the street ahead leading into the Craig’s closer clusters of buildings.

His father patted his shoulder and took off, striding towards what appeared to be a hut with tables holding stones and ledgers, a busy, diligent Drell in darker Kerhasi colors leaning forward in a chair and making marks on the pages while a line of Drell and drellahna come to sell in the Craig identified themselves and their tierra to be given allowable rate lists per the product they intended to hawk. Cuillean took one last look at the lovers in the alley, the drellahna lifting her chin in ecstasy as her lover mouthed over her lips, needfully and heedless of the open air, any voyeurs that might spy them. He carried her back behind the crates, disappearing for the most part.

He led Kalare to the mouth of the street and walked her leading the cart of yevtsye wood to within twenty-five yards of the orange and white skimmer. He stood next to Kalare, admiring the skimmer from his distance, while his father waited in line behind him another hundred yards opposite the street. Kalare filled her fur and feathers, shuffling with a shake before lowering her muzzled head to her master in hope for some treat. Cuillean pulled out the cloth of flor from his waist between his shirt and hatach, flipping apart the folds and sliding out the dried meat for her. Kalare stretched her clawed beak against the halter over her head, and Cuillean reached over her feathers, into the fur, and unclasped the belts holding her maw in its constraints. A whisper of wind blew down the way from the Craig’s direction, carrying with it papers and dust.

The skimmers in the middle of the plaza were empty, devoid of their travelers. The sun bleached the stone whiter with its glare. Kalare batted the black lashes of her pebbly eyelids, closing her beak over the grey and white strip of flor.

The old Drell stepped forward in line, his fingertips touching in front of his lower garments. The Kerhasi regulatory did not bother to look up, but changed the position of his pen to the next row of ledger space for writing.

“Name.”

“Eufemiusz Kiross.”

The shade stretched across the street, Cuillean’s gaze on the rise of the white road. Drell, drellahna, dilean, and carts moved in relative peace towards the espowyes and beyond to the next after but hidden from view.

“What have you brought,” the regulatory borishly asked, making rapid slash marks in curvilinear characters across the columns.

“I have brought one cart load of wood.”

“Anything else?”

The rise and fall of shoulders gold, dark leather brown, lift and fell on their way over the rise. Cuillean’s eyes drew from Kalare’s black beak to the road, his face lifting at the sight of the drellahna returning with two very fierce looking burrella. Their faces were poised for arrogance, relaxed of jaw, seeing and ignoring everyone. Kalare turned her head to steal another flor from her master’s hands.

“Tierra.”

“Tyrannus Ilori.”

The brown eyes looked up from the tip of pen, the table cloth spreading red beneath pebbled brown and yellow hands. The old Drell waited, watching the eyes.

Hand tucking the cloth with flor back into his hatach, Cuillean passed the tether to his other grip, watching the drellahna arrive, heavy pouch in her hands. The burrella walked along beside her, watchful gazes sweeping about, rifles on their backs but for the drellahna in the middle, blades at their belts. One looked down.

The regulatory handed the old Drell a piece of white paper with the stamped seal of a Kerhasi insignia, wreaths around the character of the K in their Rakhic alphabet. The paper curled, wildly flapping in a sudden gust, come from the south entrance. The regulatory let go of the slip before its recipient had joined his to it. The special rate sheet twisted away in the wind.

The old Drell caught it between his thumb and conjoined fingers, his arm only moving an inch. His eyes stared at the fluttering paper, then lifted to see Cuillean running down the street, Kalare sitting back on her haunches and calling in alarm, her clawed beak free. He stopped breathing at the sight of the light colored blue shirt full out behind his son, racing to a couple of Drell locked together ahead of him.

Two were bodies on the ground, the third was holding tight to a pouch, the fourth was bigger, threateningly large and dark as brick was red, and in one hand, he had hold of the pouch being shared by the drellahna, the other falling down with a sickle thin blade.

The fist with the blade shuddered in the air, Cuillean’s powerful hand stiffened through his wrist to his elbow as his other hand forced the would-be thief’s grip off the bag of monet. The drellahna stared wide eyed at the two Drell grappling before her. Her burrella groaned and struggled to get up.

The whites of the thief’s eyes were wide open with surprise, then anger at having been interfered with. Cuillean’s eyes were luminous and afraid, but he overpowered the Drell, forcing him to step backwards. The blade inched downwards as the thief fought Cuillean, desperation driving him on with adrenaline. Cuillean’s right hand controlled the other’s left wrist. They slid across the stone, boots seeking leverage against one another, Cuillean pulling the thief with him to distance them from the drellahna. The skin of his sole through the hole of his boot added grip to help him, and he used it, pressing down and pivoting.

The roar and clatter of wood rumbling over stone, talons raking at the street, rushed at them from behind.

Kalare saw her master in danger, and after rearing, untethered, maw free, she ground at a thunder up the street towards Cuillean and the thief he was locked up with.

Cuillean turned his face as far as he dared while fighting for his life, saw the rooker’s lethal maw opening and her body lunging with heaving fur and muscle, the heavy cart dangerously barreling towards them with tons of wood. Keeping his hold on the thief, he twisted and pushed on the skin of his foot, throwing both Drell out of harm’s way.

Kalare had charged and missed. She slid passed them, but the inertia of the heavy cart prevented her from stopping, and soon there was a sprawling dilean scattering Drell, wood cords tumbling out and wagon frame splintering parts everywhere from the torque of Kalare’s heavy weight wrenching joints free.

Cuillean stood off the ground, white dust in his mouth. His shirt was covered in blood, and he looked down. The thief lay beneath him, the blade handle upright in his chest, blood soon staining the white stone with its telling mark beside his body.

Across from them, the drellahna stared on, her burrella having pushed themselves up to find the extraordinary sight unfolded across the street, the chaos of the broken cart and discarded wood, the dilean fighting with her ropes.

His father ran up, stopped to check on him, and seeing it was not his injury and Cuillean’s waving him off, hurried to manage Kalare, panicked and wild. 

Grasping onto the tether that flailed about, he swatted Kalare’s chest and shoulders, clucking his tongue and whistling at her. With his strength, he yanked and snapped on the tether, finally garnering her focus, and soothed her with gentle strokes of her neck and chest.

Eventually she calmed enough for him to cradle her soft feathery head in his hands, and using the tether, bound round her maw. He then turned to look for his son.

Cuillean had bent to knee and tried to remove the blade, but the Drell grabbed his wrist and cursed him, holding his fingers tight around the hilt. He spit blood in Cuillean’s face as it bubbled from his lung.

“Go to him.” Beside his father suddenly was one of the burrella, a cut above her temple from being hit by a rocking blow from her assailant. She nodded to Cuillean, her copper crest catching light.

The old Drell slowly took his gaze from her and released the tether to her sole control, her hand having already taken it beneath his grip.

His shadow fell across his son, joining that of the drellahna in gold, and the two met eyes over his son’s bent head. When he saw who she was, the old Drell went rigid.

“You are Sousan,” he whispered, and stared at his son for what he had just accomplished.

She nodded her chin, regal crests bowing downward, and turned her gaze to the dead Drell on the street. “This be bannon,” she said in her young, fluid voice. “His name was Borachio, and he was a Kratos heir, though illegitimate. He was cast from family and pushed to the streets to bully and thieve. . . But his father has kept in touch with him and assigns this one foulness. He made attempts to rob us before, but today was different. Kratos is becoming too powerful, unhindered with their rise in the tribunal to Govannon . . Your son will be apprehended for this one’s death, though I saw he tried to save him. . . His hand is last on the blade. . . Bor Kratos will come find you and kill you if you flee. And if you have others,” her gaze traveled up to meet the old Drell’s, whose heart went ice cold at the thought of Dahna, “he will take them for his own. . . You must stay here and let your fate meet you. To flee would be a cowardly act, knowing who it is your son’s help has inadvertently claimed. Only thanes may take life without accountability, as they are only the weapons, not the mind and hands wielding them.”

The old Drell felt in listening to this child of suns and dust, he was seeing wisdom from a thousand years of ancestors staring back at him through her vivid, green eyes. Bella, youth, well articulated and versed in secrets known among the higher clans of tierra. He looked at the fine dust on her face, saw the shimmer of silver blue tint touching upon her nose, and detected the sweet odor of blue durriya from mines her family owned, and to those mines, they owed their immense wealth.

He was Tyrannus, so he needed not act and show subservience to her, but rubbing a worrisome hand over his jaw, drawing downward on his smooth scale, he began to lower to his knees and press his pentagonal scale to the whitewash as figures in white, gold, red garb and dark wear approached from down the street beneath the ever present height of the Craig.

“Nefen, please, intercede your will on my son’s behalf. He is all I have.”

Cuillean’s green eyes flicked to his father’s supplicant form, groveling under this drellahna he then looked up at with twisting confusion and anxiety.

The drellahna glanced down the street to the encroaching figures, and stepped away from them.

“I cannot. . . But I will speak to my father. May mithra be with you.” She stepped back into the protection of her second burrella, who was ignoring the blood on her scalp to put her arm in front of the teen and the other at ready above her sabeeha’s handle jutting from the belt at her waist. The first burrella pet Kalare’s face, hand tightened to the bottom of the tether where it connected around the rooker’s jaw. She turned her face to witness the arrival of garbed figures from the Kerhasi, and one stood ominously tall with a long face painted black and marble blue. He looked an ill sort, the type that lent out unfeeling verdict and administered life on a note of paper with pen ink, not paying heed to the qualities or circumstances belying a soul’s conditions. His robes were white, gold and red as the Kerhasi around him wore, and the chance of this encounter felt something more planned than anyone wise dared to point out.

The sour lips of the Kerhasi seeton opened and closed, Cuillean and his father listening as Drell spread apart from the scene of murder and chaos made by the dilean. The presence of Kerhasi burrell intimidated most from hanging around to listen, but it was the seeton, the eyes of the govannon, who struck the most terror.

“Remove both of them. . . The body _and_ the boy.”

Cuillean desperately sought his father with wide, frightened eyes as thickly built Kerhasi surrounded him and took both his arms, binding these with rope, then leading him to his feet. The slick dark stain of blood was spread upon his clothes.

“Let all see the evidence stained on this Drell,” the seeton announced, holding his hand out to Cuillean. “The penalty for life. . . Is life.”

“No,” the old Drell beseeched, slowly rising to his feet, not looking at his son, but also avoiding eye contact with the seeton. “My son is no murderer. It was an accident. The thief was attacking the Sousan,” his hand twitched towards the drellahna and her burrella.

The seeton turned his long face towards the women, his pucker without any further expression. “Did you witness this murder?”

“I assure you, it was no mur—“

“I am speaking to Nefen Nelwyn,” the dark, serpentine eyes fell heavy on the old Drell, whose face was still cast downward in respectful fashion by one being accused of a crime, or even his family name. The seeton turned his face towards the burrella, then beyond to the youthful face at her side. “Please.”

Nelwyn Sousan drew up to her full stature, which was shy of the burrella’s chin. She stepped forward, arms at her sides, and looked the seeton in the eyes. The blatancy of her eye contact was indicative of her family’s power.

“The brute assaulted my burrella and tried to steal my purse. He attempted to stab me with the knife he has turned on himself,” she said, indicating the body being lifted, the blade still seen in his chest.

“Strange that a thief would sheathe his blade in his own lung,” the seeton spoke, dipping his face some to look at her. “Nevertheless, this boy is covered in the so-called thief’s blood.”

The burrella by Kalare opened and closed her fist on the tether, keeping her outrage in check.

“My father will hear of it,” Nelwyn said, not shying from the demeaning slight of her statements.

“Thank you for your testimony, nefen.” The seeton tilted his brow. “The Kerhasi will await Sered Pilar’s invocations before justice is decided.” He turned to the old Drell, fingers touching together before his robes. “As for you, where is your paper to trade here in the Crandal?”

The old Drell reached into the folds of his shirt and withdrew the fragile rate sheet, crumpled and warm. He held this out to the seeton and straightened, finally head to head with the Drell now in charge of his son’s future. His eyes held to the collar folds at the seeton’s throat, dark purple and blue.

The seeton pinched the paper in his fingers and delicately held it to his face to read. His grin spread an insidious illness through the old Drell.

“Tyrannus. . . But Ilori, which means you are to be handled with utmost care,” the seeton stated like a snake. He read the name on the paper, folded it over once, and slipped this into his sleeve. “Your product, cart, and rooker shall be impounded while we hold an inquiry against your son, Sered Kiross. Until the full investigation is complete, all accounts received, you are forbidden to trade in the Crandal.”

The old Drell’s chest began to tighten. His hands hung loose at his sides, but a twitch was seen in his mouth.

“This is lenient, considering the heinousness of the crime,” the seeton said in mock consolation. “Do you need assistance to feed yourself or. . . Others?”

“No.” The old Drell’s face was impassive.

A Kerhasi guard stepped over to Kalare, and the burrella holding her tether let go, replaced by the thick hand of the new handler. More Kerhasi uniforms appeared, picking up the valuable yevtsye wood to stack off to the side of the street. A cart could be seen in the distance, drawn by a second dilean, black and white with red feathering around its haltered mouth, cresting the street’s rise ahead.

“A Tyrannus may face severe consequences for his association to one involved in a crime such as this,” the seeton turned his face away from Kalare being detached from the broken cart and led down the street by the guards. “What are you willing to offer, sered, that I may take to the govannon to consider in the sentencing of your son?”

Cuillean’s lonesome eyes were lost to the old Drell as Kerhasi either side of him escorted the teenager away, his arms and wrists collected in ropes. The old Drell stalwartly gazed after his son’s blue shirt back, unstained by blood.

The weight behind his eyelids felt heavy. The sun too hot on his clothes. The old Drell kept his jaw loose, his hands looser, though his chest was wound as tight as a rope being hauled down on by stones.

“I will offer my tierra in exchange for his life.”

“You realize the govannon may declare you Serepta, and all who come after you will be bound to serve his treasach.”

“My offer will pay for his life a hundred fold.” His gaze no longer able to see his son as his green crown disappeared over the horizon of the street, the old Drell gazed now upon the seeton, who nodded and beckoned him follow with the twitch of two right fingers.


	11. Chapter 11

Silver light slanted blue through the bars, releasing starlight and moon to his view from the dark of his cell. Two moons slanted from the southwest, rising over the Crandal, pockmarks on their white faces, and shadow crescent over one. The night was still, what he could not see, though he could hear voices and Drell moving somewhere below his window. Stars glimmered and shined to comfort him, alone and uncertain in his destiny. The moons shown off his lenses as his head rested against smooth stone walls. It was cool in the cell, cooler than the air outside. Burning fires could be scented with the air and incense, filtering through the window. His confinement was four walls, a door to the left of him, heavy wood and metal, dark against the white. It was a light and airy confinement, but still dark with just the nightglow of the sky dwellers passing by. He saw a shooting rock of white light pass beyond his bars, and made no sigh of exhilaration as he would have back home atop the cottus overlooking the river Tina with his sister and father seated beside him.

 _Dahna, oh, Dahna, what have I done to you?_ He thought of her alone, standing atop the cottus, probably robed in her hood and that yellow cloak she wore to keep herself warm. She would have lit the fires to keep the wuliton entranced and calm, away from the dilean in the pen out back. . . And for them to have safe passage home.

. . . But they would not be going home. . . At least, not he.

The blood had dried on his shirt, a dark stain in the moons’ light falling across him. He felt the stiffness of his fibers from that blood every time he expanded his chest to breathe. His arms and hands had been unbound. He propped his temple on his left set of knuckles, his left elbow on his left knee, bent upward, boot with his bare sole slid out wide to the left and butting up against the wall, the other right knee tucked horizontal to the rushes on the floor. His right hand’s fingers picked at a frond, dry, sharp leaves thin and bladelike. His right wrist could feel the stiff stain of blood dried on his right pant leg, against his thigh.

He didn’t know where his father was, or what would happen to Kalare, the wood, the broken cart. He pictured Nelwyn Sousan, frightened and wide eyed in his mind, her burrella both limp on the street at her feet. The tan bag of coins in her hands, holding tight against the greedy grip of a thief and would-be murderer if he hadn’t intervened. The shock on the brick brown Drell’s face, the morph into rage. There were dark spirals hidden in his skin, telling banding of darker brown. He had felt so strong, but instantly Cuillean had known that _he_ was stronger and could outmatch him if he did not let his fear or hesitation eat away his resolve. And that’s when he put his foot down, felt the street against the skin of his sole, and that tiny print of leverage gave him the ten percent of confidence he needed. He had felt the rumble of Kalare and the wagon, as he had felt the instinct to protect when he first saw Nelwyn coming down the street. Even with her burrella, two so lean and strong, armed and fierce, he just knew, felt that something was about to happen.

And so he’d released Kalare’s tether and started to run. He didn’t know why. He just knew he had to. It had startled the burrella, who focused on his coming, and then the brick red shadow had led with a fist, crushing into Nelwyn’s right burrella’s temple. Nelwyn had strafed left, the second burrella reaching for her saber, but the large Drell had hammered her with his right fist, moving through two solid drellahna like a prize fighter, and then reaching for Nelwyn as she skirted to the right, holding tight to the purse, so heavy in her hands. The Drell’s hand had landed on it, latching on, a grip in no way fearful of losing. But Nelwyn had held tight and fallen, caught herself, and pulled, using his strength to regain her feet. Her determination and tenacity to hold onto that purse against a much stronger, bigger adversary was to be commended. And she was quick and clever, but the Drell was also as determined, and his elbow cycled, his hand rising as though on engine gears, and as it emerged into view over his shoulder and behind his crests, the handle, the knife had gleamed like a fang of a wyrttun, stopping, jerking forward from its recoil of motion, slicing downward.

And with his back to Cuillean, he hadn’t seen the young Drell sprint, clothes filling behind him, reaching them and twisting up under the thief to stop his hands, control his wrists with the strength of an axeman.

He had saved the drellahna, tried to save the thief. He didn’t see how the blade had entered his chest, only arose from white dust and brown and red skin to see the first hint of blood stark against the street. The sound of breaking wheels and joists, skidding claws, Kalare’s alarmed trills, cords falling, clattering, rolling, sliding, Drell and drellahna crying out, gasping at the shock of the incident.

And then silence. Silence but for the blood pounding in his ears. Everyone was staring at him, and he had looked down to see the blood on his clothes.

And fear. Blood chilling, crippling fear.

He hadn’t taken the life. He didn’t know how. His father had always taught him to be in control of his strength. He hadn’t meant for this to happen.

The sight of the Drell on the ground surrounded in white dust and pooling blood as dark was his skin, coughing and drowning in it. The strength of his death grip had held fast to Cuillean’s mind as it did to his hand on the hilt of the blade, trying to remove it, to stop what had been done. Flecks of spittle, red, had hit him in the face and on his lips as the dying Drell cursed him, vehemently swore in deep, choking, rasping breaths. His tebris vibrated with as much hateful silent song as the blood gleamed across the red, darkly spiraled chest, and the sun shown off the thick, plated chin as the thief rolled his head backwards in a death arch, the hand still possessing Cuillean’s grip. The one on his wrist fell away, hitting the street with a heavy scrape of muscle and flesh. The hand that would have driven the blade in his chest into Nelwyn’s own.

He bowed his head, rubbing a heavy hand over his crest as he remembered seeing his father, pronate on his hands and knees, his brow scales touching the ground beneath the gold drellahna’s shadow, begging for Cuillean’s mercy. It trembled out of him, hit his throat, and squeezed through his lips.

A cry. . . At his shame.


	12. Dahna Kiross and the Morthwyl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [A/N] The silent song of the Morthwyl is represented by a colon standing before parentheses.  
> :(Like this.)

The oil black hands of scale moved slow, first a circle above the ashy grey palm, then the conjoined fingers of his right hand, black as darts, pointed to his chest and opened in a graceful dive to her. Dahna smiled and cupped the air towards her, then drew her white fingers down from beneath her chin. The two sat side by side on a wooden pen level reaching the top of the fence facing the river, and one by one, two identical pairs of dilean, young and not as full of girth as their mother, Kalare, strode over with gentle bobs of their heads to stand on either side of Dahna. One slipped its head and long neck of red, yellow, and white feathers and downy soft fur between Dahna and her companion, whose face was so dark and black one could barely discern his features, aside from the red eyes. The grey eyelids blinked and covered with black as the red gaze went to the river, Dahna having to attend to the needy kids seeking nurture and affection. She stroked the top of the head of the one between them, her other arm linking over the twin on her right, whose neck was long and straight, white head with red circles between a yellow strip from the end of its beak to its crown. She raised her eyes to look at her dark companion, whose scales, though black, gleamed like pearl well polished. His profile was sleeker than other Drell, more contoured, as though their gods had defined him in one stroke of ink, and his teness was silver grey among his tebris, which when he turned, could reveal a secret of ruby shimmer. He did not wear clothing, but for a short dress around his waist that fell below his knees, and fanned across them as the heels of his black feet perched on the next rung down.

He was Morthwyl, a species of Drell that used the inner tongue. They had no tongues with which to make sound, but communicated through a set of intricate organs hidden in their chests and throats. How they ate, no one knew, but by the musculature within their necks and behind their tebris, the Morthwyl had no trouble passing food and water down.

His gaze turned to her and she passed two fingers over her lips’ left corner and smiled, earning his in return. He cupped his right hand over his left shoulder, and leaned towards her, over the female dilean, then leaned to upright again.

This silent dialogue continued as the sun warmed the soil through the gaps in the canopies, and the river flowed, claying the banks, winding around rocks, cutting deeper into the skin of Thorolf as a lover who knew her way through the country’s crust.

They took the kids for their walk, stepping side by side through the forest along the river, a dilean either side of them. Dahna held a tether, and her companion held one for the other. They walked, never touching, only feeling in that space between them each other’s presence. The wind carried through in gentle pushes, playing the fur and feathers of the dileans. Small insects fluttered by, low to the ground, skittering in their flight of white wings and black veins.

When they found a spot on the river bank, overlooking a small island with trees sprouting out of it, bare in the sun, rocks shoring its edges, both Drell and drellahna stood together on the bank, the dilean twins free of their handlers, trailing leads in the sparse, tall bunches of grass over an orange turf. The trees spread around them, a small, but shaded clearing to protect the kids while they grazed and made curious sniffs and pecks at what they found interesting. The dark one turned to Dahna and waved his finger over his lips, made a circle with his hand over his palm, pointed to his chest, dipped to hers, and made a gentle fist that he pressed against his other fist beneath.

Dahna tilted her head to the right and smiled.

Her gaze went back down the river, over the blue and silver current shining with water and sun, to the curving banks with overgrown florae reaching down towards the water as if they were fingers trying to trail in the coolness. Through the part of the banks, over the constant line of the motion, she could see more of Thorolf’s shore cutting behind it, and beyond that, the trees, and a wisp of white smoke rising from above those.

They returned to the cottus, where Dahna secured the kids in the paddock, and went inside her home. The interior of the Kiross homestead was decorated in dried flowers, reed, and herbs. Cuillean and her father’s tools were lain or walled against the eastern side on the lower level, familiar with the scent of her family members on these, looking lonely, but ready for use. A small sketch of her mother hung from a nail on the wall, a serene face in black and white charcoal gently smiling out. The eyes were full of kindness and knowing, as if she could look at you and understand all that you were and forgive you for it in one stare. She had congruous curves along her crests, muted but somewhat flared, and her tebris was partially unfolded, open and relaxed. Dahna worked with her hands in a pewter and busied with chores to keep the cottus home and warm in the gaze of the charcoal portrait. Her friend was not to be seen, and had not set foot in the cottus. Dahna worked in the light of a warm glow from candles lit in pendants hung to beams in the ceiling. These were long and fell to glow as sprites on the end of dangling thin rods of metal. In the glow, her white scales appeared yellow, and nearly matched the color of her shawl.

Dahna kept herself busy, tending the fire, tending her father and brother’s woodworking tools. She pulled out books to read for rest, sat for a little, drew for a time, and practiced her characters on parchment. She went outside to feed the dileans and to walk around the yard, when and only when she was accompanied by the Morthwyl.

She went back inside. He did not follow. Only crossed his lips with his fingers as she did hers.

Out in the wood at the head of the cottus, a figure in cloth, dull, mustard and brown, stood on the path, an interruption to the trail and taller trees without roots and orange soil. Perched on the roof of the cottus was _his_ black figure, red eyes, seated and hunched, warding off evil. The Morthwyl stood as the figure turned and walked away through the trees until it could be seen no more.

The day crept on, the suns going higher, arcing over the forest from behind the cottus towards the land beyond the trees. A call was heard through the wood, a large creature of prey, and the dilean kids looked up inquisitive, but resumed their forage about the paddock. The shadows of the trees and canopy slanted across the cottus and its clearing, no clouds going by for the day. One by one, the suns set, the sky above the trees and through these glowing salmon, red, purple, blue and dark filling the land.

The trees were black bars, canopies blacking out the twilight. Between them, the deep navy sky could still be seen and the diagonal cast of light from two moons rising. Stars glimmered over Thorolf as they did in Umay, and a bright star, the same her brother had seen through his window, shot across the sky going east. The river was silent, calm this night as Dahna stood by a fire above the cottus ringed with sconces. Shawl clutched round her neck, the hood of her yellow cloak dipped over her brow scales. She watched the wood before the cottus, expectant, waiting.

There was a clearing of twenty yards before the trees, sconces nailed into the trunks of the perimeter. All were aglow, shimmering bright and orange yellow. The path to their home, rough and coarse, led through the wood, and it was here her eyes went after scanning what navy horizon she could see beyond the trunks. The smell of dry leaf in the air, wood and ash burning, dried flowers from the windows. The sky was still cloudless, bright and starry.

Dahna felt a cold creep through her body, face, neck, and arms, despite her being by the fire and well clothed. She didn’t shiver, merely blinked in acknowledgement. The translucent skin of her first layer of eyelids slid over red irises, followed by the white outer layer with its small black whiskers painted across her eyes. She lowered her nose into the fold of her shawl in thought.

:(They are not coming.)

A shade of darkness moved behind her, to wait at her right shoulder.

:(Something has happened. It is no longer safe here.)

She listened to his silent language, felt the flux of vibrations in her inner ear like a tapped out code, fast and filled with complex nuances, rising and falling in frequency. She could feel it vibrate on her tongue, almost tempting her to respond in the same song.

“Then we must go find them. Help me with Tille and Tihalt. I will douse the flames.”

:(No, I will take care of the warding lights. The wuliton will not know me. Wait in the paddock, and pay attention to our friends. They will sense danger first. If I am not back if they do, ride Tille for she is swifter and cleverer in the woods. Tihalt will follow her.)

She didn’t see him go, but knew when his presence was no longer atop the cottus. Dahna’s gaze lingered on the horizon through the trees, hoping for a sign of her brother and father, then turned and took the ladder down to the second level, passed through it and reached the first.

She went to a cupboard on the wall, rich and oaken, to pull out a brown leather pack rolled over and over on itself. Removing her shawl, she wrapped and tied the hatach around her narrow waist, then counted the blades, tools, and vials poking out. She pulled the inner flap of the hatach over these with calm fingers, securing them with the weight of the leather fold on top. Last, she picked up her shawl, looped it over her crests and down to her neck, arranging it over her tall frame.

She took to the the rear doorway, glancing once at the wall of carpentry tools over which hung the charcoal portrait of her mother.

Stepping out into the night, Dahna crossed the yard to the dileans in their pen, and unhinged the heavy wooden gate, pushing the cool wood bars wide. Both dileans rose from their beddings of fur, feather, and soil, went to her to seek treats and comfort as well as to fulfill their curiosity over her presence. Dahna guided them to either side of her body, her belly turned towards Tille, the female of the twins at right.

The fire on top of the cottus went out, attracting each of their gazes. Dahna’s fingers smoothed between the fibers of fur on Tille’s hollow between the dilean’s neck and back.

Out at the edge of the clearing, the lights began to douse, one by one, slowly, then faster, stopping at one side of the cottus, and not a minute later beginning to douse on the opposite side, joining the dark chain behind them. Blackness filled where there once was light, save for the comfort of the moons and stars.

Simultaneously, both twins’ heads lifted to their necks’ full height, bodies still. They were facing the south.

Dahna clicked her tongue at them and climbed onto Tille’s back. She nestled her posterior between the soft shoulders and clucked again after arranging her clothes.

“Walk forward, Tille.”

The kids, both nervous, trundled out of the pen and moved right along the cottus walls, moonlight and river reflection to the right of them through the trees. They padded through the familiar grass and dirt of the yard, making to the better lit half of the wood, eastway and north. Emerging from the shadows of the cottus came he, silent and black, his eyes hidden by a translucent layer of black eyelids. Dahna felt and scented him while she rode Tille, bobbing along with the female’s shoulder rolls as the dilean set her claws down and traveled into Thorolf wood, Tihalt keeping tail behind them.

Together, the four disappeared into darkness and twilight, Dahna carried between the shoulders of a dilean no more than two summers, a brother in tow, a loyal shadow at Dahna’s side.


	13. Chapter 13

Moon came through the window, greeting the visitor who opened the north door, letting in a pale ghostly light between the legs and boots. The head was discernible only by the shape of the cowl covering it, but the shoulders were huge, and one arm held the door apart. There was the smell of something fetid outside, a black shape farther behind the imposing figure in the doorway. It moved in a weak stretch, then fell still.

The figure moved into the cottus, not touching anything, only turning right and easily moving through the shadow. Along the counter, it followed, gazing eye level from the north wall, west, turning to peer up at the ladder and pausing, as though to scent the air and listen. It continued on, following the cupboards, the knives left out over herbs, a piece of uneaten bread drying alone on a plate. A bun with meat, cold, but sweet smelling. The figure paused by the food, raised a hand to hold over this, then moved on. The food was cold.

The figure avoided the hanging pendants for candles from the ceiling and turned once in a circle, seeking what could only be guessed. The east wall attracted its attention. It began to walk forward, but a table at the left with moonlight spilling across the papers and charcoal upon its pale surface caught the figure’s attention.

A thin glistening blade reflected the moonlight as the gloved hand wielding it carefully strew the papers one flip after another until a grey charcoal sketch of a lone, tall, Drell with a smooth head and deep eyes, and imperceptible smile on black as charcoal lips, gazed back. The figure stared at the paper, holding the top parchment from falling, and with a flick, scattered this topmost paper to gaze upon the charcoal sketch without distraction. The eyes were wider than most, colorless save for the black. But there was something in the gaze that spoke of treasure. Words, silent yet loud enough through that look alone. . .

The stranger to the cottus knew that what was in those eyes was something that echoed for ages.

Adoration.

Affection.

Love.

Complete, utter, reverence for one who had gazed back to see that look and draw it there on that parchment.

The blade flicked quick, casting the portrait aside. There were more portraits of the same Drell standing, his profile to the sketcher. His stature, his dress, the hidden blades along his thighs. The sketch was exquisite, done by a master’s hand. Every detail from expression to clothes was captured by the fingers of _she_ who had drawn this Drell. He had no markings, only taupe and black as per the medium for canvas and tool. The figure took the papers as it passed on, resuming its course to the east wall.

Axes, saws, whittle tools, strange blades meant for angles and specific cuts lined the bottom of the stone wall, propped on their heads, some on their handles, the biggest the size of a grown Drell’s leg. Shelves carried more. Hooks held heads of further instruments of a woodman’s trade. Everything well cared for, exactly in its place. Not a mess, like in the kitchen, or upon the table and counters where someone else had been at work before _rudely_ departing prior to her unexpected guest’s arrival. But there was one spot on the wall where something had gone amiss. It was a simple, bare space on the stone with a nail all that was left. It was too small to be a tool to take up such central focus on the wall. Nothing with a handle. Nothing often used by the shadow of wood dust left around it. It’s silhouette of a shape was too symmetrically even to be anything other than a frame. The figure smiled.

 _She_ had taken the picture for a reason. Maybe something sentimental, something close.

Or something that would identify her existence.

_The old one lied._

But that was obvious. That was obvious by the sketch of the Drell on the table, the one in love, whose portrait and study was now in someone else’s possession.

The figure swept towards the ladder to the second level, but did not climb. Instead, it leapt straight up and hauled its long body from a hold on the ledge of the wood floor above. The figure spent little time there, checking the rooms, the boudicea in which these Drell had lived. In one room, more evidence of _she_ was found. The scent of her was everywhere, but here, in her boudicea, her bedding and clothes and brushes were filled with her presence.

And she was unclaimed.

The figure stopped and considered. The memory of the sketch with the Drell appeared. Another scent of the air throughout the upper floor revealed only the brother, the father, and she. No other male.

_Only an admirer?_

Striding back to the ladder, the figure dropped and landed on the bottom level, silent as a cat. It turned and went for the door to the backyard, opened it, and stepped out into the cool air where it stopped again.

The gate to the dilean’s pen was wide open. A pair of dilean tracks led eastward. Gloved fingers ran through the disturbed soil, scratched and troughed by claws. The gloves raised to the openness of the hooded cowl, and held still for a long second. The figure rose from being bent to the soil and silent as a wraith, flowed into the trees east and north.

The smell of dileans could be tracked for miles.

And the smell of her. . . _He_ looked forward to meeting in flesh.


	14. Chapter 14

Looking up through the trees, at least one of the moons kept pace, parts of her white face looming over them. The trunks were long, canopies high, branches crisscrossing sparsely above. The blue sky with its diamonds was like a still, surreal as they moved passed the trunks, the night and water to their east. The ground was bare, needled, leaves crunching soft underfoot where the dileans set their claws. The moon and sky caught their fur, casting a pale, wan shadow of blue on the fibers. Dahna’s yellow shawl was cast in green as she rode, waving side to side gracefully on Tille’s shoulders. The dilean was warm beneath her, and her hands were kept warm as well, resting among fur and downy feathers. Tihalt followed obediently, gold eyes dilated into wide black pools, seeing the world around them. Down on the ground with nary a betrayal of noise strode the Morthwyl, his black hands loose at his sides, moving in synch with his footsteps. The dark skirt he wore barely grazed the ground, sweeping soundlessly above it. His face turned up to hers, and she could not see his blood red eyes for the dark lids cloaking these. Moonlight seemed to absorb into his darkness. He brushed his fingers over his lips at her. Dahna’s hand raised to the openness of her cowl and drew a line back against hers.

Together they trode through the wood, her companion preferring the ground and she a-ride. Moon slanted now through the trees, spilling across them, as they dipped in and out of bars of shadow. Above the treetops, the night was silent and clear, the trees green in their blue canopy. Far off, an orange flame appeared, a small speck of light. More lights lit, one by one, then simultaneously, until a dozen stars of small fires could be seen riddling through Thorolf’s forest and rocky hills.

:(Someone is lighting wards to draw the wuliton away.)

He looked over his shoulder, behind them, the dileans lifting their beaks and snuffling the air.

“That’s odd.”

His gaze moved to her mouth, watching her lips form the words.

“Why are they drawing the wuliton off? It’s as if they’re clearing the woods. I can smell the burning. There’s certainly more than one.”

Tille’s head turned left, testing the air.

Dahna gazed down, and the Morthwyl stopped. Tille did as well, Tihalt last.

His gaze pointed in the direction that both dileans now fixated.

“What is it?” Dahna whispered.

The darkness between the western trees stared back at them, foreboding. Dahna slid her hand inside her shawl, flicking up the top of her hatach belt with the conjoined fingers of her right hand.

As the Morthwyl’s black gaze pierced through the dark curtain of forest, his eyes saw that which only he could see. A figure, clothed in black, stood alone between the trees, his arms by his sides, motionless and waiting. The Morthwyl opened back his eyelids. The figure was gone.

His red eyes re-lidded, and he spoke while taking footsteps west, leading away from Dahna and the dilean kids.

:(Put away your knife. He only comes for me.)

Dahna looked from the back of the Morthwyl to the curtain of darkness, trying to see. Her friend moved farther away from her, stepping silently among the western tree border.

“Where are you going?” It was the first time her contralto voice held fear.

For him.

“Don’t leave me.”

A silhouette all he was, he stopped, and turned his head, singing in his silent song to her over the slope of his black shoulder.

:(I will never leave you.)

Dahna’s lips pursed tighter together against a tremble. Her fingers gripped Tille’s fur as her other hand fell away from the hilt of a dagger.

“I love you.”

The Morthwyl lingered a second longer, closing his eyes fully in her song.

Turning his face forward, he deepened into the trees.

Her hand freed from the hilt she was seeking in her hatach, Dahna reached for his silhouette which soon disappeared complete. She blinked rapidly, swiping fingers over her lips. One tear shed free of her eyelids and followed the outline of her patak to her mouth.

The sapphire sky, stars, and moon cast them in halos—Dahna, Tille, and Tihalt—as the three white visions faced the darkness where the Morthwyl had gone.


	15. Chapter 15

The dark swallowed him up, a comfort. He walked for a time, five minutes, one more, until the night sky behind him was obscured by the dark wood. He did come to a clearing where the moons shined down, unobstructed. There were two stones in the middle, one squat and one tall, too awkward to be a throne, but too close together not to be considered a chair. His concealed eyes gazed around the clearing as he waited, feet together, the soft skirt hanging just over these. His heart beat steady, his breathing unhindered. Each sense keen as the blades sheathed along his thighs.

His faced turned right. A hooded figure stepped through the trees thirteen yards away from him. It came forward and waited, not looking at him, but after a moment’s short prayer, the figure removed its hood in the moonlight and let himself be seen.

His breathing remained steady.

The yellow eyes hooded as the serpentine head dipped down in a reptilian nod of greeting. The skin was light teal with a darker emerald of band running between scalp and tebris. His robes were dark, not fully black, so he had either left his cloak somewhere else in the woods, or with someone. He ran the black gloves of his fingers over his crests and laid them on the front of his robe. He held them there, and raised his chin, pointed, a silver tebris picking up moon and revealing more slits of red among the folds.

The clearing was covered in a thinning grass, mostly soil of the wood and needles strewn between where some grass stood. In daylight, the meadow should have filled with blades, but the Morthwyl knew this was a killing ground, and so why the wuliton had been drawn off deeper into the forest was known. His black covered gaze followed the new Drell to the rocks in the middle of the clearing. He stepped onto the tallest and opened both of his hands away. Removing the gloves and dropping these onto the squat stone below him, he then lifted his arms out to the sides. Turning once on the upright rock, the Drell slowed when he faced him, then turned further until his draped back was exposed. Moonlight cast down on him, giving them silver by which to see, though as always, the Morthwyl’s skin seemed to absorb all light, whereas the other Drell’s robes caught the silver moons in each of its folds.

The Morthwyl looked aside, left, his right eye watching the Drell, but a glance had to be cast behind him. Slowly, each black eyelid slid down, apart, and wide, exposing the red belying these. His head tilted back to facing the Drell full on.

Flicking apart the seams of the dress, he exposed two long, brown ribbed handles tightened for grip with slick leather. Each had thin, short hilts with a hold for the thumb. The blades were two fold: one branch, the longest point reaching down past the grooves of his knee, the second shorter end curved towards the rear and stopping eight inches from where the two rivers of dull, black metal converged together into the hilt. The longest blade was curved as a feather bowing away from the shortest, a vine of death as fluid and cutting as water. His fingers graced the bound hilts and snapped these free of their tethers with one tug. The black metal pushed away the moonlight, but in no way let it reflect.

The robes fell down from the Drell on the stone, revealing pale, knotted muscle and speckles of mottled emerald and blue among the shoulders. The cast robes gathered around the squat stone behind him. A dress tied tight around the waist was an even lighter color of greenish yellow hue in the two moons, but the skin of the Drell was nearly white with large smooth diamonds. The Drell lifted his left leg, skirt not moving in back as he remained perched, balanced on the right. His arms remained outspread to the sides of him, palms up as if in prayer for repentance. The banded scalp with its narrow crests flared either side began to tilt backwards until his nose could be seen pointing to the stars. Small, deeply hued horns traveled from the top of his crown down to the nape of his thick, flat neck, and going no further than the lower trapezoid of muscle.

He bared his teeth to the sky in an exhilarated smile of what was to come.

The Morthwyl took a running start, silent as the balls of his feet nearly flew across the dirt and needles, and the power of his leap took him ten yards, two meters high. The blades came out as an owl swooping down on its prey, widening away from the Morthwyl as he propelled through the air, arcing with perfect symmetry before looping down to cut into the pale back of mottled scale.

 _This is my offering,_ he thought, just as the Drell tipped his head forward and the arms came to fold at his sides, the body hunching in preparation for death.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [A/N1] The Morthwyl may communicate in silent song, but so may other subspecies of Drell.  
> [A/N2] A Halak is the dress-skirt worn by Drell, male and female.  
> [A/N3] Graphic violence follows.

Red eyes glowed as his silver tebris swelled, ruby folds catching the paleness of the moons like jewels in his skin. The blade tips came together before his eyes, his legs folding, heels tucking behind him, the skirt heavy and silent through his groin. The last second, the moons found a gleam to make upon a small scale in the middle of his brow, and that was when the Drell standing supplicant on the stone wrenched backwards, pale mottled hands cutting through the feathered blades, and the fingers opened, stretching outwards, as palms as knotted as thick cords of rope smashed into his chest. The Drell’s raised leg kicked out, powerful columns of muscle revealing through the left slit of the skirt’s front. The Morthwyl’s forward, graceful momentum was reversed, a sickening break in inertia that folded his body over the rear arm of the T formation of Drell. He had had him, and then with perfect timing, _he_ had switched the mass of the universe.

The Drell moved rapidly away from him, still standing in that contortionist’s pose on the stone, a taunting smile on his face. The world spun shortly thereafter, the Morthwyl rolling once he hit the ground and sliding to a stop on his knee and heel, both short bladed tongues furrowing into the crust to slow his impetus backwards. The Morthwyl raised his black crown and watched the Drell on the stone gather his body back together into one tall line, turning as he did to face him.

He stepped down to the next stone, foot landing on the dark robes, and proceeded to touch down once more onto the dirt. His right foot remained on the second stone, knee bent in conquest as he tucked both thumbs into the tautly bound hatach circumventing a thick yellow waist, painted up the middle with fingers of the color broadly reaching under his chest before flowing in a straight line through his pectorals to cup under the tebris. He looked triumphant, cocky, appraised of himself. He opened his mouth, smiling wide, teeth straight and sharp. A delighted _haaa_ of air blasted from his thick lungs, preceding a voice confident and mellow toned.

“I could barely hear you running.” The Drell’s eyes watched the dark shadow remain on bended knee with earth-bitten blades. “You must have taken five steps before you came through the air at me. Impressive for a young Drell. Ten legs, I’d say,” calculating the distance, he paused, smile lingering. His eyes thinned. “I can _double_ that.”

The Morthwyl remained silent in the stare of his adversary towering before him. His skirts lay between his legs and behind, flat and lined straight on the ground. The moons’ light seemed brighter and more revealing, scathing.

The Drell removed his hands from his hatach and crouched to be eye level with the Morthwyl. He picked up his gloves, sliding fingers into the tight leather confines.

“You must be one of those Morthwyl that live in the crags of Rakha. Pity the place became so foul. I imagine that’s why you’re here,” he said, busy with the fitting of his gloves, “searching for a new hole, or maybe a naïve drellahna.”

From some low brush yards from the clearing, pale fingers moved apart the leaves.

The Drell flexed his hand in their new trappings, his face obscenely mocking.

“I can smell her you know. You,” he gave a curt shake of his head, “I only knew you existed because of her. You could say she helped me, not realizing it.” He lifted his robes on the rock, opening a slit and pulling out a handful of folded leafs. His white arm reached forth, extending to a slight crook in the elbow, tossing the papers on the dirt. One hit its corner and flared open, rolling to come to rest, its paper panels bobbing. The Morthwyl’s red pupils glanced at the scattered parchments and back to the Drell.

“She’s very good,” he rolled his lip and nodded, “you should take a look. Nearly studied you. Everything, but beneath the halak ( _skirt_ ). . . Or does she hide those out of sight of the family, I wonder.” His yellow eyes curved in playfulness. His right conjoined fingers tapped his lips as he puckered and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. . . I didn’t smell you in her boudicea, or anywhere in the cottus. Hekla, you could have caught me, killed me, had I gone straight for her instead of leading you here.” That cruel, mocking smile again. The Drell stood, the Morthwyl doing the same. “I think I’m right in declaring that you care for her.” The smile softened, the harsh face growing thoughtful as he angled his head to look at him obliquely, gathering up his robes which he’d lifted as he stood tall. “Tell you what.” He flipped out the robes, hand indenting against the material as he sought to pull it on, “I’ll sleep with her first, show her how it’s supposed to feel, then let you plant your seeds.”

The Morthwyl lunged forward, hands fisting tight around the hilts as one fell low, the other raised high.

The robe whipped out, spun around the top blade, and the Drell wrenched it from his grip with the ensnaring cloth. The blade fell with a thud to the ground, nestled in the fabric, and the Drell drew the robe to him, bending down to unbind the weapon. He held it up by its hilt, rotating it left and right to examine it.

“Nice piece. Maybe I’ll give it back to you.” His smile returned to the Morthwyl. “If you agree to leave and let me have her.”

The Morthwyl stepped forward with his right leg parting the halak, left hand free, right hand low, still in possession of the blade’s sibling.

The Drell swiftly spun the blade in hand and stabbed it between the rocks, snapping it with a violent downward thrust.

He held the broken hilt end up, grinning, then tossed it away to his left. He stepped forward, coiling up the robe, his yellow eyes practically glowing as the Morthwyl took a step back, first his back foot, then his front.

“Very good,” the Drell complimented, eyes flicking over the Morthwyl’s stance and practiced footwork. “You’ve obviously been taught. Where?” The Morthwyl did not reply, the Drell taking another step forward, winding the robe tighter with slow rolling motions of his arms, shoulders flexing the smooth bulges of muscle aligning these. His face dipped downward, having the effect of casting long shadows beneath his brow ridges and nose, the corners of his patak coming from his mouth. “I know Morthwyl don’t have tongues, but we’re both Drell and could use the harmony. Sing to me, little Morthwyl. Tell me who taught you so that I may visit him and pay my respect for providing one with such an eager opponent.”

:(It was no man.)

The Drell paused, raising his chin. The silver and red folds of his tebris swelled and thinned.

:(A drellahna. . . Then that explains why you are so weak.)

The eyelids above the red eyes lowered down, a thin gleam all to be seen coming from his face.

:(I could teach you how to be a real thane if you wanted.) The Drell stepped forward again, one foot swooping in line with his body and out to plant on the left. :(You have potential, and we lack for Morthwyl in these parts. . . One day Rakha will be ours, and you could have a barra to call your own, a cottus to watch a-high from and welcome our rulers with, when they visit to greet their citizens.)

:(Never.) The Morthwyl slid his back heel further, right foot pushing from the forward soil over spikes of grass.

:(You could even have _her_.)

White eyelids closed and opened in the mosaic shadows of the brush.

:(She belongs to no one. She is free!)

The Morthwyl leapt as light as a cricket, the black blade hilted in both hands as his sore chest expanded, ribs flaring open, skirts flying silent as downy wings again. He cut down in a quarter arc, lodging the blade into the tight wad of robing.

The Drell pressed him upward until the Morthwyl hung suspended in his face, smiling bared teeth. He headbutted the Morthwyl.

He dropped, relieved of his blade as the Drell took both wad of robes and captured sword, pushing these away from him, the weapon and cloth tumbling across the clearing to his right. Lowering his hands, arms ready at the sides of his hips, he stepped forward towards the Morthwyl scooting backwards on his hands in the dirt.

“You can have your life if you stop this foolishness. Someone learned you to fight, but she taught you no tactics. What Drell would ever kick a wuliton in the mouth, hmm?” His right arm swung, hand making to grasp the Morthwyl’s ankle, but he slid this away and used the momentum to regain to his feet beneath.

“You show your weakness. A Drell should never advertise his heart’s desire, lest his enemy use it to his advantage.” The Drell smiled evilly. “Your blood is hot, like mine, but my fire is controlled, whereas yours is wild. One more chance: I offer you training, fame, hara, monet. . . A new home and family.”

:(I am the homeless, the friendless, the abandoned. . . I don’t tempt towards empty lies.)

“Pity,” the Drell said, straightening. His body suddenly relaxed. His gaze looked aside, eyes glancing into the trees. “Then I will make sure to make you watch as I sow my seed with her.”

Dahna’s mouth opened in a small part as she stepped back from the brush, the leaves closing still together.

The yellow eyes had looked directly into her own.

The Drell sprang, a phenomenal burst of power. Latching onto the Morthwyl’s neck, he lifted him with one arm and threw him all the way back to the stones.

“Fear not, Nefen Kiross,” the Drell raised his voice, looking to where he’d seen her in the brush while striding to collect the Morthwyl struggling to regain himself against the squat rock, “there are more of those like me. Your brother will be included soon. Come to me freely, and I will honor you gently in Bor’s hara this night as we make you into true burrella.” He turned his face to the Morthwyl standing up, and as the red eyed gaze turned to focus on the Drell, a gloved hand curled into a fist and sliced sideways into the Morthwyl’s tebris and jaw, tumbling him backwards over the taller rock.

The Drell grabbed hold of his knee and calf, dragging him roughly back over.

“Oh, drellahna, I can smell your terror.” He held the calf in one hand, calling to the forest. “If you want me to let him live, come with me. I will bring you to your father. In fact, maybe both shall live.”

She burst through the trees, her cowl around her face, shawl closed around her.

The Drell raised his eye ridges, his smile gleaming as he nodded his head at her in approval. His eyes widened, yellow and black, as she pushed back her hood, revealing defiant, ruby red eyes and the sloping pearl white crests of her skull.

“You are _truly_ the Ordained,” he hissed, eyes slitting with pleasure.

She lifted her chin, revealing the rousing crimson of her tebris.

The Drell hardened.

Tossing the calf free, he strode towards her, indifferent now to the Morthwyl. His lust hardened the muscles across his chest, tebris frilling the inner folds with sharp red flangs as he made for her.

“I have always wanted to sleep in an Ordained. You are glorious.”

Dahna’s breathing quickened. The deliberations of those yellow eyes were clear and purposeful.

“Desire me,” he snarled out the right side of his mouth, “for I am mithra descended to lay with you and spread those frills.” His lips curled as he reached for her.

Dahna’s cloak flew open, revealed her bare chested, spirals of ruby tebris swelling along her waist above the bindings of a pale halak.

“I am _never_ to be touched unless I _will_ it.”

Red eyes as cold, hot as the purest flame, Dahna’s knees flexed as her shawl fell off. She sprang into the air like a deer, body gracefully turning as she lashed out with six knives as long as her fingers and clutched securely between. Her delicate face gave way to a savage grimace, teeth bared in spell of anger. Her knee bent forward, parallel to the ground, the other hooked and following behind her.

The Morthwyl pressed up lithely, grasped the blade wedged between the rocks, and pulled.

Dahna glimpsed the yellow eyes before her momentum turned her, feeling the sing of her first three blades of her right hand sliding fluidly through silk. The scent and rush of blood tainted the air and grew stronger as she felt the second set of three blades cut through yielding tissue. Her feet landed, her back to the towering brute, and slowly turned to face the thane as his large hands descended towards her. She was small in front of him, pale white beneath the mottled teals and greens. A shadow loomed over the pair as red eyes rose high above the Drell’s shoulders, black feet alighting on top of these, skirts concealing the shredded tebris and throat with their ghastly spills. As the thane’s arms closed nearer, a black blade pendulummed down from his left to his right in front of her, and the thick, muscular arms simply dropped, dark circles of fasciae and white skeleton spilling blood in trickles either side of her slender figure.

Dahna straightened from her ready hunch as the Morthwyl hopped and dropped down between she and the dying Drell. He landed and turned, placing a pair of conjoined fingertips against the yellow, white sternum around which rivulets of darkness ran, and he gently pushed.

The nearly decapitated body fell backwards, away from them, shedding moonlight onto the Morthwyl and Dahna as he turned to her now, focusing his red gaze on her face.

The body hit the ground with a heavy impact, spraying pulsing, hot blood into the reeds and dirt behind them, the thick white arms hewn above the elbows laying out in a crucifix. 

The Morthwyl touched two fingers to his black pentagonal scale, crossed these down to touch upon his left shoulder. His black eyelids shuttered as he bowed his head to her.

Dahna turned away, wrath in her eyes as she walked to collect her shawl, the moons’ light casting her pearl scales in a luminous glow. 


	17. Chapter 17

Dahna’s white hand reached to pick up the yellow shawl framed by dry green grass blades blue in the light, but his hand, black and absorbing, picked it up first and raised as she did. His red gaze warmed back at her, and he glanced down with his face as he opened the shawl and spread it for her to enter.

The wrath in her expression had softened to gratitude, and she turned from him, her pearl shoulders and back shadowed as she raised her arms and he helped the shawl onto her. Dahna’s fingers closed around the edges, drawing the cloth across her smooth chest. She glanced down, her expression now of thought, and a little apprehension. The Morthwyl stood behind her, his face visible over her shoulder, and she turned to him and crossed his lips with her fingers.

He shook his head vigorously and stepped backwards, red eyes wide suddenly and fearful. These resumed their normal widths as he turned away and looked for the ground.

Dahna stepped to him and stroked her fingers across his lips, this time making contact with the black skin.

Horrified his expression, he held up his hand and stepped around her, Dahna watching him, her pearl face expressionless, but concealing in the moonlight as she faced the inner clearing where he walked wide of the thane’s cruciform body and dark stain of blood, towards leafs of paper scattered about the grass, wavering as though waving to him to come collect. He carried a broken blade in his hand, his head bent, face turning left and right as he went to pick up each and every bidding white leaf. He kept walking, zig zagging across the dirt and around the stones, picking up the remaining blade end, and that also which wasn’t broken. Holding the swords in one hand, the papers in the other, he came back to her, halak moving between his legs as he strode silently over. His red eyes gazed at her as he came to a stop in front of Dahna, features almost vanishing with no light on his face.

:(You must not draw me anymore. He knew of me because of your sketches.)

He handed these to her, Dahna’s pearl fingers lowering from her shawl to take the papers, but then changing direction to skim his lips. He jerked away, fending off her stubborn hand with the parchments.

:(Stop.)

She stepped towards him again, pushing the useless papers aside and sprawling her fingers over his smooth black patak.

:(Stop, siha.)

They stepped right, avoiding the body devoid of its arms.

The sadness emanating from his eyes was what made her halt her advance. She turned and bent to the ground, picking up the papers, tears dropping unhelpfully from her eyes.

“It’s not fair. . .” she whispered. “It’s not fair. . .”

Crinkling the sketches in her right hand, she pulled these into the folds of her shawl and walked onward into the trees. Her blades were nowhere to be seen, only to be presumed that they were returned to her body somehow.

Dahna of the Slight Hand.

Dahna of the Fire.

The Morthwyl followed loyally after her, his halak whisking between his legs. They passed the body on their left, Dahna’s yellow shawl moving swiftly ahead of him into the trees.

Her movements to make her way back through the brightening darkness among the trees lining the river were sad and hurt. She walked slowly at times, fast, errantly pausing, starting up again. It was a tortured dance to make it back to the waiting white bodies of the dileans, both raising colorful heads one after the other to her arrival. And then his black shadow stood behind her, barely discernible. She turned and faced him, her yellow cowl hiding her words.

“I said I love you.”

He only gazed at her.

She turned and went to Tille, running fingers into her fur.

“My father is with the Kerhasi. My brother is prisoner somehow. We need to go to the Craig and rescue them,” she spoke to Tille’s back. The dilean lowered its beak to her, Tihalt stepping in closer at her right.

:(Your brother is alive, but your father has passed on from this world.)

She turned suddenly and stared at him. Her ruby eyes were wide beneath the cowl. She pushed this back to hear him better.

“What did you say?” Her voice was a disbelieving whisper.

The Morthwyl stood stoic, hands at his sides, blades held together in the left fist at his thigh. His face turned to the south and west behind him and his right palm opened its fingers as he gazed back at her.

:(I saw a Drell in the path to your family cottus. The Drell was dressed in fine brown clothing, and he had your father’s face. He stopped in the path to look at the window you were cutting dicky leaves by, then turned west and walked among the trees. He disappeared after that.)

“Why didn’t you tell me when you thought you saw him?” she whispered.

:(I did not know how to deliver this painful news to you.)

“You could have seen the Borhala.”

He shook his head gravely.

“You are mistaken. My father is not dead.” She faced Tille and began to pull up onto her down back. “We will go to the Craig, find the both of them— _and_ Kalare—and return with them at once to the cottus.”

“That is a fool’s errand, child.”

“Don’t call me a child, Nalda.”

Dahna’s cowl turned in opening to the right, and through and above the rumps of the dileans, she could see three figures waiting just beyond the moons’ light.

Satin lips of copper and brown moved in the dimness of a grey cowl. “The Morthwyl is right. Your father has expired this day. Cuillean will be sent across the Beircheart to be trained as a thane. Your tierra has been descended to Serepta status. And Kalare is now property of Bor Kratos and his estate. A thane was dispatched to investigate the cottus and seek signs of additions—you—to be brought to the Craig for dispersement.”

The cowls and robes they wore were moth grey and thin. Two taller figures stood behind the one in front, the color of her hands revealed together between the downward angle of her sleeves. The opening frame shifted towards the Morthwyl.

:(You let her touch you. Twice with her finger across your lip, once on your face.)

He blinked and looked down, away from them.

:(Look at me.)

He obeyed, but he was ashamed.

The voice gentled. “You resisted, which is good.”

The cowl’s opening shifted back to Dahna’s face, which turned away from the Morthwyl as she had been staring at him. “You, nefen, must remind yourself who you are and what your purpose is. Do not tempt him again. I say this only to spare him pain.”

The air, though silent, was thunder to Dahna’s teness. Her stomach began to twist as much as her fingers began to thread deeper into Tille’s fur. The dilean’s eyes blinked rapidly.

“Come back with us now. We will resume your training. You performed very well against the tha—“

“Not until I save my brother!”

Dahna swung her skirts up onto Tille’s back and squeezed her thighs into the dilean’s ribs. Tille took off, a shake of white fur and a steady head that remained still as the body shot northward, swerving around tree trunks and over roots, leaving Nalda and the others behind.

The Morthwyl ran to Tihalt who was slow to catch on, but starting to bunch and stretch his muscles into a chase after his twin. As the black shadow pulled himself up, throwing his leg over the leading dilean, Nalda stepped forward and commanded him.

“You will not let her touch you again.”

The Morthwyl glanced around his shoulder, showing his acknowledgement with the red eyed glow. He squeezed Tihalt’s ribs with his legs to urge him on after Tille and Dahna, the cloaked figures behind them growing to small moontouched shadows.

Nalda’s copper brown lips came together in a wordless statement.

_She was always stubborn._


	18. Chapter 18

Stretching and coiling, the white feather fur limbs of Tille ripped up dirt that changed from roots and dark soil to sparse grass and light sand, leaving the river and Thorolf behind to conquer Umay with her black claws tunneling through solid surf. Dahna’s skirts, cowl, and shawl rippled and flew behind her as the dilean maintained her swift speed onto the dunes, staying low and weaving between the dark on one side, light on the other hills rippling westward from the shoreline where Tina met the sea bay. Dahna blinked against sand kicking up under Tille’s claws and clicked her tongue, refraining from adding any more pressure to the dilean’s ribs. She felt saddened she had left Tihalt behind, and her love, but as Tille walked at a recovering pace, Dahna twisted her cowl to look behind her. Rising over the crest of a dune was a dilean’s head, followed by a white chest with colorings similar to Tille’s in the moonlight, and the blacker than night figure of the Morthwyl riding down, spreading slides and kicks of sand as the dilean channeled through the soft silts.

She slowed Tille to an easy walk, not wanting to stop, but allowing Tihalt and the Morthwyl to catch up. Tihalt clacked his beak in reproof at his sister. The Morthwyl slid off his back, skirts sliding after, and landed in the sand between Tille and Tihalt to stare up at Dahna, who looked away from him, above the dilean’s shoulders.

:(You shouldn’t ignore Nalda. She is wise.)

“You listen too much with your head,” she replied, still not looking at him and only focused on navigating the next dune, though Tille knew where to go.

:(You are too hotheaded.)

“I am hot blooded like that thane. Maybe I should have let him seed with me. Start everything early so Nalda will be happy to have done with us.”

The Morthwyl, looking up into the sky at her, could clearly be read with a scowl and his narrowed red eyes.

:(That is a foolish thing to say, and from a child. I thought you were a woman.)

“I am a woman like any other drellahna.”

:(You are naïve like the thane said.)

“Go away from me. You are not coming to find my brother. You are hindering me with Nalda’s undue influence.”

She raised her chin and clicked her tongue, urging Tille to break into a light run.

The Morthwyl caught her shawl and held fast.

“Aya!”

Dahna looked up from the sand and rolled onto her hip, staring back over her knee at him, Tihalt blinking and turning its head sideways to get a good look at her.

Tille stopped a few yards ahead, turning and fluttering her lashes.

“Did you just pull me off my dilean?”

:(I helped you down. It’s not my fault you forget you have feet.)

Dahna’s face drew into a pert pucker, her eyes slitting in the shadow of the dune. She stood up and strode over to the Morthwyl, dropped before she met him, and kicked his shins backwards to make him fall face first in the sand. And she was quick about it, which made him fill his tebris with silt. He looked up at her receding back, the shawl swaying over her low waist and halak.

Dahna choked on the string of her shawl as she was jerked backwards, the Morthwyl having stood and stepped on the end of her yellow cloth. She fell on her rump and growled, turning over to plant her hands in the silk dust. The Morthwyl grinned back at her, puffing his tebris in a little taunt. She lunged off her belly, latched onto his ankles and drew them right with her grip.

He fell backwards and landed with a puff of sand on the ground.

Staring at the moons clipping the dune on the east, he hummed an exasperated sigh and rolled up.

Dahna pinned his chest with her knees, the shawl tenting down from her shoulders and she pillared, facing him. He set his head back down into the sand, tilting his face and looking at her.

“Fine,” she said, raising her chin, and shaking her shoulders, her arms coming out the folds of her shawl, “since it’s such punishment. . .”

His eyes went wide as she arced down, grabbed his patak, and planted a kiss on his mouth. She held him still as a petrified wood in liplock, his hands out to the sides in rigor mortis.

The kiss in the sands was sweet and tender, and if it would be the only time where Nalda wasn’t watching because the dunes were either easy to be spotted on but just as easy to hide both parties from each other, she was going to make well on it. She wasn’t sure just how a kiss should be, but she imagined it had to be something that spoke the words ‘I love you’ through pressure. So she kissed him gentle, her eyes squeezed shut at first, then twitching out of their squeeze into loose eyelids, and her pucker, which had started off stiff and pursed, relaxed so her lips could feel light and catch if she moved her chin slightly upwards. And then she caught on that the lips could yield, mold over his upper lip, whittle her lower lip down between his to nearly touch his teeth, and that she could breathe out while doing it instead of holding her breath tight as a knot in her throat.

Meanwhile, the poor Morthwyl’s eyelids fluttered black and red as he melted into the sand, his fingers still clawing into the silt and his legs taut as wood. He didn’t mind the weight on his chest, and technically she had her shawl between them, so the only offense was on his lips right now and her fingerprints burning into his patak. But he would have scars there forever, he feared, and Nalda would know because she would see the seared marks he imagined Dahna making into his skin.

Dahna slowly opened her eyes, lifting her pearl pout, tilting away from his as she gazed passed the tips of their noses and saw his eyes slowly open to hers. She didn’t move her fingers. He could feel her breaths through her nose and mouth on both of his and didn’t move himself, not even to blink.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” she whispered, raising her crests away, her delicate nose and pearl white skin almost blue in the moonlight. Her eyes seemed darker to him, and her tebris was slightly swollen.

:(We need to get up.) He thumped the back of his head into the sand, closing his eyes from the special organ at her throat and along her cheeks. His body was tensing, but it was not the rigor mortis response. :(We need to get up and go back to Nalda.) He forced his breathing steady, chest rising and falling, suddenly remembering pain where the thane had hit him with his palms and foot.

Dahna’s face drew from hesitation into an aggrieved purse. She whipped her face away from his and stood up, skirts skimming over his chest as she made marks through the sand to Tille and Tihalt waiting higher up in the curve of the dune.

The Morthwyl exhaled, touching his brow scale and holding his hand there as he roused himself down. He rolled over and washed his face with sand, scrubbing it into his frills and pushing up to scour his skin with the abrasive mineral. He rubbed so hard it left his skin peeling, but worked in causing his need to settle.

Taking a deep breath that ached his chest to expand so wide and contract so strongly, he sat kneeling in the sand, his brow ridges lowering as he gazed about in search of Dahna.

Behind him, Tihalt’s feathery rump was just cresting the dune.

The Morthwyl got to his feet, shedding sand from his halak as he ran over and up the betraying dune, mounds of silt pooling slantwise from his feet. He slid down the other side, catching up with her leading Tille by her hand on the dilean’s side of neck. Her yellow cowl was up, tinted blue green in the night. He caught up and strode beside her down the dune, hands swinging more than usual as he chided her, red eyes narrowed.

:(You shouldn’t have done that. Now Nalda will be displeased.)

“Only if you tell her.”

He stopped in his tracks, his red eyes sloping sideways from the upper middle of his face. She walked ahead of him, Tille and Tihalt ignoring the Morthwyl, though Tihalt eventually gave him a glance some paces away.

He hopped and skipped down the sand to catch up again, and once by Dahna’s side, chopped his right hand in the air in front of him.

:(You are asking me to hide from sooleawa. She will have me striped if she finds out I hid this from her!)

Dahna didn’t look his way.

“You liked it as much as I did. I could see it in your face.”

:(That’s not the point.) He narrowed his eyes into grudgeful little red lines, lowering his head into his shoulders. He trilled with reluctance, gazing off into the northeastern dunes. :(It was better than I dreamed.)

Dahna grinned in the concealment of her cowl.

The dunes were white in the moons, their protective sides dark and shadowy, giving the Drell and their dileans aid by which to travel unseen. Far to the east, a mist of salt laden sea came to shore, and farther out among the waters, the large profiles of galienas followed along the coastline, heading north and south in the moonlit waves. Ahead, north in the distance, the sprawling crescent of the Crandal with her sunbleached streets and walls, and rising like an impregnable mound in the middle, the great rock so called the Craig, stark against the moonsplashed stone.


	19. Chapter 19

The walls stark grey and blue yet white in the day were an obstacle. Dahna’s yellow cloak and the Morthwyl’s black scales set them out against the wall. Dahna’s idea was to remove her clothes and walk like a ghost, and the Morthwyl would dawn her cloak and be a pale green yellow for a time while he kept up in the shadows with her. Tille and Tihalt watched from the base of the dune far right of the south entrance of the crandal.

Dahna walked back a ways, her halak separated, bound around her neck, bound around her waist and between her legs. She had a swimmer’s litheness of a body, and it was the most the Morthwyl had ever seen of her legs, torso, arms, shoulders, and face bared. Her eyes were dark jewels and she turned, waiting on the border of white steps of the crandal, waiting for him to give her the sign.

A kite of off-tint yellow rippled silently through the night air, the Morthwyl clearing to the top of wall in one leap. Ten legs, indeed. He had made twelve with three steps and a hop. Turning, perched like a rock at the top, he reached down, offering his hand. Dahna, who stood out against the dunes, Tihalt and Tille calmly watching, ran, her long legs bending, barely touching the ground it seemed as she made no noise. She crossed the white stone flat, ran up the wall for nearly six feet vertical, and as she started to fall back, pushed off hooked toes, catching ragged, rough yet smooth wall, barely a crack in the surface but there, and propelled upwards, catching the Morthwyl’s hand as her white body interrupted the night away from the wall.

The Morthwyl pulled her to him, but stepped back and dropped behind the wall to make room for her, landing in a crouch and quickly following by lowering her muscular leg over left and sliding over, barely touching her belly or halak ends.

She landed in the street along the perimeter wall, the Morthwyl’s hands brushing her halak bound around her waist, and the two looked at each other, before darting off straight under cover of the long slanted box of shadow from the barrier.

Dahna glanced right at his shoulder in the yellow cloak as they ran silently through the alleys, and he felt her look and glanced from the cowl opening with shielded grey eyes. A small smile was easing the tension on her face, and she knew he was smiling back as he turned away to watch the alley ahead they ran.

She was so bold. So brave. Unhindered. It almost made his heart beat loudly to see her freedom symbolized by how naked she almost was. She was his siha, and she blended into the white walls and shadows well. The cowl did not hide his face if one were to peer passed it and see the strange eyes and the blackness as absorbing as midnight without stars or moons. But it helped. Those who were about, walking the alleys, resting against lovers, drinking or singing, barely looked at his passing. Dahna evaded their presence altogether, making scarce alongside the Morthwyl, her slender body hidden beside the flowing cloak. Small, reed pitched roofs stuck out as eaves over doorways. Lights, rectangular, some round, blazed onto the wider streets and thinner alleys. There was a smell of litter in the back, dilean droppings, leftover foods, and the ever present fire scent meant for cooking. The sound of metal being hammered, long, slow, spelling with a rhythm of an art taught for centuries adorned the atmosphere of night lullaby coming from the crandal. The espowyes were empty, save for one or two travelers crossing to go home, or revelers on the edges making quiet with drink.

Dahna and the Morthwyl slowed, her hands fluttering out beside her. The side of his hand brushed her fingers incidentally as they both looked up. His face a dark shadow in the cowl. Hers blue and pale in the moons’ receding glow with the rest of the white stone.

“If the Kerhasi have him,” she whispered, “they will hold him in the crandal until the galiena come, but where? In the Craig, you think?”

The Morthwyl turned the cowl slightly to the left. They were looking at the southern profile of the lump of Craig towering above the city’s center. It was stark, tinted purple in the night, and a long obvious pole stuck out from its west front. As was custom, figures would hang from it, one a night, to let the residents and visitors know of the Kerhasi’s conquests and trials of offenders to the treasachs. A lone figure did hang from the rope, head bent forward on its chest. The Morthwyl pointed across Dahna to the right.

:(The prisoners face the sea. It is closest to the docks and kirtana that carry the slaves away. We should go east around the rock and see if there are any boats boarding prisoners, then work our way in from there. We may intercept him.)

“Good thinking,” she said, turned her face and stared at his cowl. The Morthwyl walked across her and they moved right to the east of the Craig.

Dahna stopped and stared to the right suddenly.

The walls had opened, and in a shallow paddock of stone and long reeds scattered across the floor of the crandal, a large rooker clicked talons over to the wooded bars and started flicking its beak.

Dahna ran over lightly and stopped underneath Kalare’s head, reaching up both pearl, luminous hands to the descending face of feathers and fur. Both were covered in light, moons having slipped their hands through the alleyway north behind the holding pen.

“Kalare.” Dahna smiled, rubbing the smooth beak, into the feathers and between the wide eyes. “I brought Tille and Tihalt with me,” she whispered to the lonely mother.

The Morthwyl stepped and joined beside her, looking worriedly at Dahna.

:(We cannot free her and your brother at the same time, siha.)

Dahna glanced at him, moving her hand down to stroke Kalare’s soft, thrumming neck, pulsing with blood and heat. She looked back up at the mother, narrowed her eyes, and widened these like a pop of bejeweled orbs, an idea come to her head.

“Kalare, find papa. Find Cuill.”

She stepped quickly to the left, Kalare and the Morthwyl turning their heads to follow her. Dahna found the end of the gate, a metal loop easy enough to lift, and unhooked it over the post. She opened it, pushing inwards, and stood at the gate waving to her hand in cupping motions to the big white dilean with splashes of dark colors over her fur and face. Kalare clicked outwards, nails rasping.

The Morthwyl strode over to Dahna, his shoulders tense under the shawl.

:(She will wake someone. This is foolish!)

“It will save us time at the cost of some noise. Do you want to be around when the suns come up?” Dahna whispered back.

The Morthwyl’s shoulders rose with a deep, huff of breath as he looked to the left, Kalare’s large white body passing between them.

A large rooker walking free in the streets might have aroused attention had anyone been up and looking out their windows. But Kalare seemed to understand the need for discretion and walked as quiet as the claws would allow, calmly bobbing. The benefit was that Dahna could blend beside her and the Morthwyl had a moving wall of somewhat camouflaged protection with the cloak. He walked flanking Kalare’s left, while Dahna flanked her right shoulder. They stopped as a pair of traders walked by meters ahead, hardly noticing them, and went on without incident.

Dahna released a breath at the same time the Morthwyl did. Kalare’s furry chest shifted forward as she began to walk again, lifting up claw after claw.

Dahna held Kalare’s fur on her shoulder for control and to give herself delight in having found the twins’ mother.

The Morthwyl kept peering over Kalare’s chest and shoulders to see that Dahna was still there, her crests evident to see in their smooth curves behind her head. He looked away, wincing out a memory of her kiss, brushing, pushing against his teeth, and quelled a thrill through his heart.

Dahna glanced over, her lips parted as she breathed through her mouth, tiptoeing on the balls of her feet to check to see the Morthwyl was still there. She saw the back of the yellow hood, seemingly looking left, and lowered her gaze down, glancing to the ground with a smile.

Her face jerked up.

:(Someone’s coming.)

The smell of sweat, darker venom, heavier footsteps, arms swinging and brushing against metal and heavy leather signaled burrell to them.

Dahna tightened her grip on Kalare’s fur and the dilean rooker turned left down a side alley. Her white rump was splotched with feathers of the red and yellow. Dahna squeezed up beside Kalare’s swell of mid-half and stepped around crates and big wide baskets. She turned, testing one as the smell grew stronger, not of the dilean’s backside, but of larger male Drell, the type that kept formation and eyes up around the Craig. They were so close to the tribunal chambers, it should have been expected.

Dahna grabbed the biggest basket, and the Morthwyl understood what she was trying to do. Together they moved it to block sight or Kalare’s backside and Dahna ran through the other baskets, looking inside for grain or food. She found two loaves of discarded, moldy bread and threw these in front of Kalare. The dilean’s flamboyant, feathery head lowered down and only the top of her white hump was seen.

Her heart racing, Dahna stared ahead of the alley, where long shadows were beginning to appear, tilting towards the right of the entrance. She placed herself, back to the basket, grabbed the Morthwyl and held him to her front, pulling the cloak around them, spreading it with her hands on the sides of the weave as she leaned, pressing against it, holding him tight to her.

Whether she did it on purpose or not, the Morthwyl closed both sets of eyelids and held his head straight to keep the cowl blocking view of them and her face especially.

And from the view from the street, they blended well with the color of the basket and pale walls as a phalaksh of heavy Kerhasi troops walked in formation between the cottis and bazis, gazing about, maybe one taking note of the obstruction in the alley, but not wanting to break from formation to investigate lest he be punished or embarrassed by his peers.

It was a long time before the final tail end of the guard traveled passed.

The spread cloak against the large body of woven basket did not move, though Kalare’s head lifted and turned her black beak to peer one large golden eye at the pair hidden beneath the spread shawl.

Dahna breathed through her nose, eyes still closed as the Morthwyl moved back his face from her lips.

:(We should go. . . The guard will return. And our luck is running thin.)

She opened her eyes and leaned forward off the basket, which cracked slightly from the relief of her weight.

“Who’s that?”

The harsh, deep voice of a Kerhasi burrell checking the doorways and following behind the guard, a captain of sorts, was stopped at the left of the alley entrance, looking inward. He saw the rooker and didn’t recognize it.

The Morthwyl shoved his face forward and kissed Dahna, hard. His left hand went to her waist, his right to her chin, lifting her jaw upwards to open her mouth apart from his as he squeezed and she cried out in an alarming yet sensual, drellahna gasp, then laughed like a bell as he tickled her waist’s tebris with his fingers prying firmly. He played her like a stringed instrument, eliciting the most beautiful melody of sensual pleasure and grace, rapture to a male’s ears.

And the captain burrell, being in love with a drellahna his own, chuckled.

“Move along you two, and find a better bed than a dilean’s backrest to make love on.”

His high figure disappeared around the wall as he went to catch up with his burrell, and the figures relaxed down the cloak, as the Morthwyl stepped backwards and away from Dahna, pressing herself up from the basket by her hands and forearms. The rooker looked on and clicked its hooked beak.

If Dahna’s eyes could burn any brighter. . . The Morthwyl’s grey eyelids opened to reveal a burning intensity to her, before these closed, shielding him once again.

:(Come, siha. Let us go find the others.)


	20. Chapter 20

His black hand fell away from the folds of halak, in which he’d found her sensitive frills and not saying more, he stepped to her left, around the basket, and began to push it out of the way, back to its place against the wall, unblocking Kalare as Dahna turned with her head and followed him with her eyes, then her feet.

She stopped behind him as he set the basket, pressing it with his palms against the round, smooth curves of binded reed, and sensing her behind him, tilted his cowl to his right, not yet looking at her, feeling her gaze on the back of his hood.

:(No, siha. I know what you’re thinking. I was only trying to help us out of our situation with the burrell.)

:(You say that. . .)

She tilted her crests as he turned to her behind Kalare’s right haunch. He glanced at the rooker waiting patiently, and back to Dahna’s waiting gaze. She raised her finger to his lips and brushed it over these, following with the opening cant of her mouth, her lips parting this time for a more or less uninhibited kiss. The Morthwyl’s eyelids flicked open, fluttered and narrowed, parted red slits as he turned his face away and moved quickly left from her. Dahna paused in air, opened her eyes, and turned her face after him, closing her lips. A cunning smile was on her face, however, and she was not mad with him this time.

He waited at the entrance to the alley, short white buildings ahead, leaned out and looked right and left, then back at her, the moon casting across the yellow shawl on his back. Kalare backed out towards him and he stepped right, disappearing behind the near corner as Dahna coaxed the rooker out with a fistful of fur gently squeezed on her haunch. Dahna kept tight to the scoop of fur between Kalare’s thigh and middle, walking out on the left of the alley.

They went right, continuing the way Kalare led them, the rooker’s head bobbing gently and pointing left, then slowly, the rooker’s head turning right. The Morthwyl on her left, Dahna on her right and cutting off from view as the dilean turned them down an intersection. Nothing more moved in the dark of the quiet streets so close to the Craig. The shadow of great rock was on their right, which troubled the Morthwyl as they were heading west to the front entrance, away from the sea. Darker shadows slid over them, Kalare’s haunches and shoulders rolling forward steadily, the neck slightly moving as the calm head still pointed right, following the curve of walls. Dahna kept her hand on Kalare’s shoulder, but didn’t look over her back to see the Morthwyl. The yellow shawl flowed out behind him, just over the white stone, and barely revealing view of his black feet.

Kalare slowed, clacked her beak twice, and raised the soft, dark underside of these bones upwards and to the right. The Morthwyl’s red eyes sloughed downward their corners below his temples as his face turned to where Kalare’s beak and smoothly feathered flat crown was angled upwards.

Dahna’s face was already turned, looking up, the royal deep blue of sky and stars framing her darkened crests and features. She blinked once, inner translucent layer sliding closed over her red irises, the white pearl scales, thin, covering from bottom and top over these. Her face made no indication that she recognized what she saw, but by the stillness and direction of her gaze, she certainly did see what Kalare was looking at.

:(Siha. . . We should leave. Now.)

The Morthwyl’s gaze did not come down. He was not fearful, but he sensed danger.

Dahna’s gaze nor face turned from what she was looking at, high above.

Hanging from the Craig’s pole of shame was the still form of darkness. Arms somewhere hanging by the sides, a loose vestment over the form, suspended below the feet and hiding these both. The crests were flat, large, smoothed down along the neck bent forward. Chin to chest. The chest was large, the body long and heavy.

Dahna’s chest rose and fell hard.

“It’s not him.”

:(Siha.)

She left Kalare’s shoulder, releasing the fur, hands coming to her sides, swinging up to the front of her as she reached for the dark stone surface of the Craig and found her handholds, guiding herself upward over the silty, dirty rock leaving dark soot stained in her palms and nails. Her face did not turn from the floating figure, eerily suspended from a long cord of rope, tied to a ring in the rock at the base of the projection and threaded through loops like a fishing pole. She climbed, gaining closer, a pale white shadow on the Craig’s exterior moving higher and higher. The Morthwyl and Kalare stared upward from the darkened street, watching Dahna’s lithe form ascend farther and farther away, dangerously exposed to those who might look to the south wall surface of the Craig.

Dahna’s face took on a look of determination. She would make that pole, climb to the end, and gaze down to see the face of the figure waiting on the end of the rope. The shadow kept its back to her, pale vestment of cream cloth covering broad shoulders. It looked so heavy at the end of the rope. Dahna’s eyes picked up a light, whether from a far off star or a flash in the distance she didn’t know, but hope cast out from her determined gaze as she grasped the rock and precipitously made to the higher level, fixated on the form suspended, waiting for her.

It moved.

She stilled, rigid, eyes wider. She hadn’t dared to let herself believe it was him. She couldn’t.

Not her father.

And now, desperate, she frantically closed the distance to the loop of rope secured by the ring of metal fixed to the Craig’s surface and scrabbled at it with her fingers, her heart pounding. In that movement of a single finger on the drell’s left hand peeping beneath the loose sleeve, she saw her father’s strength and resilience, his spirit. She knew it was him. Tears brimming from her eyes, she tugged on the knot, but his weight kept it so heavy and tight. . .

The Morthwyl saw her fighting the rope, desperation in her jerks and tugs, her legs bent right and left as she sprawled against the rock. Pulling off his hood and shawl, he took out the broken blade at his hip, ran forward three steps and leapt high, calling to her with a trill, turning her face suddenly.

:(Siha!)

He spun the blade to her, knowing she would catch it.

Dahna reached out, deftly caught the smooth, brown hilt, and locking her thumb through its catch, she hacked at the rope, severing it with one powerful stroke, as her toes and knees pressed and grinded tenaciously to the rough rock surface, she leaning outwards from her lower back.

The rope let off a zip and hiss as the body fell, Dahna reaching out left to catch the cut end, missing it through her fingers.

The Morthwyl landed, spun looking upwards, and held out his arms as the heavy body plummeted like a log, knocking the Morthwyl down against the espowyes stones with its immediate weight and size clobbering him.

Dahna climbed down, quick as a spider, touched the squared white stones rippling out from the base built up from the desert encasing the Craig, and ran over to the Morthwyl and her father. The Morthwyl’s legs were sticking out south towards Kalare, one knee bent, the other straight, toes pointed up. Kalare slowly bobbed her head over, white and marbled fur shifting with shimmers in the night’s glow. Dahna’s elegant form knelt over the one on top of the Morthwyl and heaved forward, pushing against it to roll it off and aside the Morthwyl, letting him sit up, thighs still pinned by the body’s lower half, and turning his head right, looking down where Dahna threw herself, hunched above the upper half, her head below her shoulders which were shaking as her fingers gripped the pale vestment covering her father’s chest.


	21. Chapter 21

The broad, chiseled face of green and yellow patak turned over, his lips loose as his head wobbled on the white and blue stained stone. Dahna’s small hand in comparison to the patriarch’s head only covered the corner of his raised fringe by his left eye, pale fingers tracing over the smooth, sloped scale. Her other hand moved to rest on his wide tebris, folds loose and flat. She pet his hard chin and brushed her fingers over the smoothness of his face, trying to get the eyes, sheathed in thick lids, to open.

His head tilted left and right, a dried groan coming from his lips as his eyelids slowly pulled up and the second set eased open. He stared at the sky, only a faint gleam on the dark lenses, and his mouth exercised a subtle stretch, yawning down as he tucked his head forward to gaze with delayed recognition at her face above him. His eyes suddenly narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again as in pain as he rolled his head back down onto his crests and hoarsed out in agony, “No, Dahna, no. . . You’re supposed to be at home. . . Not here. . .”

Dahna moved her hands to his cloth and gripped it, tugging and stretching the narrow threads. “Papa, papa, where’s Cuillean? What do you mean I’m supposed to be at home? They sent a thane after me!”

His head stopped rocking from side to side and his eyelids fluttered open again, lifting his head some to look at her. The brow scales of his hooded ridges lowered as he formed words with his mouth, disbelief in them. “They sent a thane? . . . On my word. . .”

“I killed him, papa.” She nodded her head eagerly, smiling, as if this would please him.

His eyes widened at her.

“You killed _him_? . . . How?”

He began to lift up, rolling onto his big left elbow, setting down with his right as Dahna leaned off him and pulled on his vestment, helping him roll over onto his side. His gaze was fixed on the ground, white stones spreading before him, his right palm flat and left hand in a soft fist. He was weak, but his strength was coming back.

“They sent a thane. . . After my daughter,” he said weakly, trying to comprehend. “They sent. . . A man-Drell. . . After my child. . . After I swore to them. . .” His face suddenly turned to her, kneeling at his belly, upright and watching him as she listened. “You killed him. . . They will know you exist.”

“No, papa, they can’t. How would they?”

“Dahna, you have to get out of here. . . We are Serepta, we have been cursed!” He grabbed onto her upper arms beneath her shoulders, as gentle and as strong as he could, Dahna’s eyes wide suddenly with fear. He stared at her, then down at the legs extending from under him, black and colorless against the white blue stone, and his head turned to the Morthwyl sitting up, suddenly revealed as Dahna turned her head, showing him between them.

“Who are you?”

The Morthwyl’s grey lids unfolded, the red eyes showing, and turned to Dahna’s face, which turned to her father’s staring at the black shadow of night.

“He is Morthwyl, papa,” she said softly. “He is my protector.”

Her father’s face turned to hers. “How long?”

“Since mama died.” She cringed a little. “Since before even.”

His face turned back to the Morthwyl, whose red eyes slitted upward in what could be presumed to be a nervous smile, seeing he shrank a little into his shoulders in the presence of the confused father.

His head snapped right, Eufemiusz Kiross’s eyes going round.

Kalare had closed the distance, her black talons resting quietly on the stone. She lowered her beak to him, turning her soft feathered head right to rub against his raising hand which had freed Dahna’s right arm.

“I thought I’d not see this trouble again,” he breathed through a wan smile, removing his left to catch her head between his palms and affectionately knead his strong fingers into the scalp. “Dahna,” her father said, lowering his gaze down, then turning to her, glancing once at the Morthwyl, “Cuillean is to be a thane. . . He will be delivered in the morning. . . To start a life of servitude to the Kratos treasach.”

She laid her hands against the vestment on his chest, shaking her head. “No, papa. We are Tyrannus tierra. There must be a mistake.”

He collected her hands, holding them together with his, large and covering these.

“Cuillean killed the son of Bor Kratos,” he said, met with a shocked look of parted lips and lowered eye ridges of pearl and cast blue. “It was an accident, but he saved the Sousan heiress from being mugged, murdered by the thief.”

“So he was a bannon,” she said, folding her ridges, “so it shouldn’t matter.”

“It does, my dear, it does. . . Bor Kratos knows my history. . . And your mother’s. . . It was all planned. . . He had declared _morten stirling_ on this heir, and was fond of using him. . .”

He winced and brought his hand from hers to his throat. Dahna moved her right as if to cover this, then looked quickly at the Morthwyl.

“We need to get him out of here. Let’s put him on Kalare and you take him back to the cottus. I will stay and find Cuillean.”

The Morthwyl’s red eyes widened.

“No, Dahna. . . No,” her father gently patted at her, “Cuillean is a part of the Kerhasi now. . . If you take him away, he will be to run forever, never to set foot in the crandal without being shot on sight. . . The same for me.”

He opened his eyes to her look of disbelief, bordering on indignation.

“You _will_ come with us, papa,” she spoke, firm, angry.

Her father placed his hand on her shoulder and nodded his head.

“We are Serepta now, child. . . That means I must die in order for you to live.”

“You are coming with us.” Her eyes tightened, the rubies glistening. “You _will come with us_ ,” she demanded.

He began to sit forward, pull his legs under him, and stand. His fingers curled into his hands, he gazed down at her, following her eyes up as she rose. The Morthwyl hopped his feet under him and quickly stood tall, no worse for being flattened by a two hundred seventy pound Drell.

“I hung from that noose for a reason, Dahna. I am willing to give my life to preserve Cuillean’s. . . That, and on the end of this rope,” he pointed to the thick cord around his neck, “is my word that you do not exist. . . I did not want them coming for you. . . You do not know what they will do if the Hyrrokkin Dior knew an unclaimed Ilori with the white skin existed.”

“They would each lie with me,” she said, certain to let him know she was not naïve.

Eufemiusz Kiross narrowed his eyes and turned his head, flat plates along his neck sliding over the white vestment of offering on his shoulders. “Did your masters teach her this. . . Or did you?”

“I was told by the Kerhasla, papa. . . Leave him alone. . . He is here because I will him to be so.”

Her father brought his angry gaze back to her, hands still curled but looser. The moons’ light shown off his garb as he walked passed her left, heading towards the Craig’s tall, rectangular maw of entrance over which he had been hung, waiting for the suns to hallow his impending death. She turned, staring at him as Kalare’s large head swiveled on her tall neck, the Morthwyl looking after him too.

“Where are you going?” Dahna whispered urgently, body turning to follow.

“I am going back to my fate,” he replied solemnly, continuing to walk on towards the rectangular mouth of set stone pylons.

“Father. . . Father!” she demanded as loud as she dared. She ran over, the Morthwyl reaching for her, but she swirled her arm, blocking him off. Dahna ran and spun in front of her father, pushing her hands against his strong trunk, thick as a yevtsye tree. She dug the balls of her feet into the lined stone as he came to a stop, hands at his sides, his face turning down to the back of her crests. Her body and shoulders hunched, pushing against him, trying to make him turn back. “You will turn back with me, papa.” She said it with as firm conviction as she could.

His heavy touch on her bare scales, over the back of her shoulder, almost made her weaken.

“Papa. . . Please. . . Come _home_ with us. . .”

Silent, he rubbed her shoulder and lowered his head.

“Dahna. . . If you have been to the Kerhasla. . . Then you will know this is what must happen for a son to be taken into the fold. . .”

“I will rescue him. . . I can. . .”

He shook his head, moving his hand to her chin and lifting her face as her elbows bent, hands sliding around his white sacrificial garb and holding him as she gazed upward, patak tilting into his fingers. The ruby eyes glistened wet, tears threatening on their rims.

Her father’s smile only appeared, reluctant, certain, warm.

“So much fire, Dahna. . . We have lost our tierra today. . . I can only promise you that Cuillean has the power to earn it back by being in Kratos’ good grace for the rest of his days. . . And yours. . . But to take on a new patriarch, you know the old must give himself away willing. . . I love you, Dahna. . . I will have much to tell your mother when I meet her across the sands. . .”

“Papa, please, you don’t have to do this! We can run! We can hide! The Kerhasla and Borhala are not our enemy!”

“They will use you to spread more blood by your last name, Dahna. . . You are a tool to them.” His smile frowned. “And to be pursued over the continent and seas by thanes. . . It would not be living. . . It would be shame. . . I never told you this, but we are descended from—“

“Kings, papa, kings.” She finished, staring up into her father’s face. Her fingers tightened on the back of his dress. “Please, papa, I know it wouldn’t be what you want in terms of living, but at least you will be alive. . . And so will Cuillean. . . With _me_. . .”

He rotated his lips in a small circle, face looking up suddenly, and she could see the glisten of wet in his eyes. She thought with relief she had changed his decision.

“Morthwyl,” he commanded in an austere tone she had never heard before. “You will see her away from here. Make sure she is kept safe and taken to the tunnels. Nelwyn Sousan owes my son her life. That is important to know. Remember. . . I am going to my grave, Dahna. A Drell. Not a coward. Go now. I will this.”

Her eyes widened.

He began to walk forward.

Powerful hands gently slipped on her arm and around her waist, restraining her tight to the Morthwyl’s black figure, and Dahna began to wrest and push against him, pulling at her father’s clothes, but his powerful grip squeezed her wrists until she nearly cried out in pain and was forced to free the fabric.

“Papa, no!”

She pleaded at his white garbed back, wrinkled, no longer smooth, the rope around his powerful neck trailing over his shoulder. He was strong, unlike mere Drell, and his death would be long and slow because of the incredibly built neck.

He went to his death like a king, a slave, but with the dignity of the thane he once used to be.

Behind him, Dahna writhed and twisted in the Morthwyl’s arms, he silent as he fought to control her. She hissed and bared her teeth, biting into his bicep savagely to force him to release her, but the Morthwyl made no flinch, bearing this.

When she saw what she had done, she looked up into his red eyes and started to cry, sorry for having hurt him, broken by what was happening. And she clung to him as if the Morthwyl were all that were keeping her afloat.

Her father’s tall, stoic figure, shadowed beneath the arch of the Craig’s entrance, turned black, and lit once again in the light of the sconces of flame on the walls. He walked on as if his rope were too weak and he was gone to file a complaint. . . That his son’s new masters bought cords poorly made for a king who deserved better.

He shed no tears, the lights warming his face. His comforts were that Dahna would be trained better than he had hoped, if she had killed a thane at a mere seventeen years of age. . . And the Morthwyl would die to protect her. She was in good hands, as her mother had explained she would be, and Cuillean would be taught to become what he’d always admired, every time he saw them perform in the crandal.

A thane.

And finally, Eufemiusz Kiross as well would be reunited with Talaith Lela, his warrior bride, onlya decade of waiting for her since the Kris took her life too soon from Rakhana.


	22. Chapter 22

The edge of her pearl crest along the right of her head trailed away from crown, down to the nape of her neck and flaring an inch behind her head. Black fingers moved from her back to the white contours of her topmost scales, running comfortingly between the channels and down over the curve of her skull. He did this again, lifting and trailing his fingers back and forth over the same skin, feeling her shake and snuffle against him, her heart hammering, skin to skin, against his chest. He could feel her heat and pulse, scent her venom on her skin between her scaled pattern, and when she tilted her head up, crests falling backwards, ruby eyes flicking up distantly into the gleam of moons, her lips slightly parted as she panted out the remaining sighs and sobs of grief and sorrow. Her eyes continued to raise to his.

The Morthwyl was looking down at her, right patak and tebris on his shoulder, breathing steadily, staying calm, his right hand resting in stillness in the air just a few inches shy of her delicate face. Holding his conjoined fingers up and folding his second and third free digits to his palm, he swept these low, across her lips, then upwards, across his. He did this again, repeating the motion as he had with his fingers caressing through her crests, and gradually did Dahna straighten upwards, coming face to face with her nose tilted downward as was her royally gemmed gaze, left hand of fingers tucked against her tebris as she slowly gathered strength from his coaxing. She cast her eyes shyly down, and the Morthwyl hesitated, nudging his nose towards her face, which suddenly turned away as she threw her gaze to the entrance of the Craig. She mouthed her father’s name, stopped, faltering from speaking aloud.

The Morthwyl twirled his conjoined fingers under her chin, she drawing naturally back to face him as he held up his left palm, ash and sooten, between them, and with his right fingers held over this, made a clockwise circle, then pointed to his chest with the fingers. Pointed to hers.

_I will fill you._

Her left hand closed over his open palm, cupped in a bowl shape, and squeezed, mouth slightly open, eyes on the hands, and though she was forbidden, she looked up into his gaze. Though he’d been commanded, and knew it would only hurt them more, his lips moved forward, parting to kiss hers, and he pressed both his right and her left hand to his chest between them, covering these with his larger left palm until all the white of her skin was barely a seam to be seen among his midnight hold.

Their shadows stretched across the espowyes with Kalare’s standing loyally by them, the rooker’s head still pointed towards the Craig where Dahna’s father had gone.

Lonely figures, alone in the moonlight, and far off, a star gleamed brightly for a very brief time.

Eufemiusz Kiross stepped from an arched tunnel made of compact, layered bricks that could only be carried with two hands. The room he entered was aglow, lit by the sconces, and a small carpet was lain across the floor just beyond the entrance. He looked right in his white garb, the thick rope around his neck, at the back of an earthly toned Drell, who was busy leaning over something, eyes down, ignoring him or unaware of his presence.

“Seeton.”

The gold and yellow eyes lifted, eyelids blinking, and the professional torturer turned. He was not the same as the seeton he had met in the crandal, though he had a faint resemblance. Crimson adorned the clothing at his neck and shoulders. The seeton took two steps forward, hands raised, but palms downward.

“Sere,” he spoke, his voice a lighter version of the adult Drell Eufemiusz had met, “what are you doing. . . Down?”

Smileless, eyes complacent, Eufemiusz disbelievingly shook his head, looking at the younger seeton.

“I can’t possibly go to my gods if you can’t string me up correctly.”

He had drawn forth the severed end of the rope, which though unraveled, looked too clean a cut to have shorn on its own. The seeton traveled across the small distance to Eufemiusz and held out both palms, lowering one to take the end to study it, holding the other part of its length in his right hand. His face turned up to Eufemiusz who, with a sudden sneer, headbutted the seeton with his skull’s brow, a sick _thud_ sounding, after which the Drell immediately stumbled backwards before Eufemiusz unlooped the noose from his head, walked forward, following the Drell, and wrapped it around the other’s neck, pushing and strangling him backwards into the room.

Their shadows cast on the wall as the larger of two elbows raised, holding the ends of the rope wide,the smaller of the Drell lifting until his toes scratched the ground, the sound of silt and grit rough under the brushes of his jerking boots. Hand shadows held at the small Drell’s throat, clutching as the knees bent and straightened repeatedly, kicking, suspended in the air, dress garb shaking erratically beneath him. Eufemiusz’s shadow was still as a statue, as big, arms unmoving, rope held taut in pronated fists with only a slight sink where it joined to the seeton’s shadow of neck in the sconce lights of the walls. An irking, troubled choke of sound, followed by a breaking sigh and hiss, accompanied the stilling of movement. Eufemiusz’s shadow’s fists came together as the seeton’s shadow lowered down, head hanging, crests up.

The former thane’s silhouetted face turned left against the gold and cream colored stone wall.

The flames flickered, making his shadow dance.

Three Drell draped in white solid and gold crimson trim stepped close together down a spiraling stairwell, flames below lighting their garb and faces. Their skin was dark, brown, and yellow. Pants were white, hatach’s covered beneath the long overshirts they wore with the Kerhasi symbol of an eye filled with two suns and wiggled strokes painted outwards at acute angles. One glanced left to a darkened arch kept company by some bathing moonlight, and resumed focus downward, descending in the middle of the others accompanying him.

Some pots and tall vessels lined the wall, as Eufemiusz’s figure stepped around the divide of stone, peering down the stair at the receding shadows and noise of boots.

He leaned over it, peering deeper, the smooth skin and slightly raised scales of his face warming in the upward reaching light from below.

He settled back on heel, looked left, and stepped away from both the arch and stair. Another darkened tunnel, and two lit rooms, opened on the right and ahead at the end. His body in shadow, dressed in the vestment he had worn since his first changing, he kept to the dark and tread quiet as a feline towards the tunnel and halved light. As he passed the first room on the right, he checked it, the source inside casting orange onto his cream cloth.

His gaze fell into the room, light striking up his features as he slowed, cautious.

Two terpsichorean bodies, lain on their side, non-garbed, slept on long pillows and ribbed rugs in front of a large mantle housing an equally large, burning fire. Their copper scales gleamed, threaded with pinks and whites, their red tebral folds silken and flattened against their waists and inner thighs. Their elbows were bent softly, bodies languorous and relaxed. If they had tails, they would have flicked contentedly, they were so reposed on the floor of that chamber.

The one closest to the doorway raised her pink and copper crests to turn over, her long back to him, and sliding her right hand over her waist, elbow flexing backward, she rolled partly over and gazed at him with long, sleepy eyes lined with black and gold sparkle.

 _Hara_ , he thought, stirred by the sultry look she gave him, as if she expected him to come inside and demand her right then, and she was given over to the responsibility to let him please himself with her body. She waited, staring at him with expectation. The tebral folds on her waist were still flat against her curve.

Eufemiusz raised his right conjoined fingers to his lips, then floated his palm out flat to the floor,telling her to go back to rest.

Without a word, she sleepily turned her face back to the fire and draped her sleek arm in front of her over a pillow, laying her crests down once again. Fire gleamed off the scintillation of her shoulder, sculpted, meant for dance, meant for performance.

The archway was empty again.

Treading silently to the end of the tunnel, into a new glow of light, Eufemiusz leaned weight onto his forefoot carefully, peering at the next setting.

A stairway along the wall, no rail, went down to the next landing, where an arch existed leading into another room, before bending backwards to the next level. The stones were warm in the glow of flickering sconces, and the must of silt, dust, bodies, gear, a faint scent of ocean mingled.

Eufemiusz walked down the right stair jutting from the wall and rising from the lower level, traveling in the middle of the steps, confident and unafraid of being there. His vestment caught on the higher ledges as he went down and stopped before the arch of the next landing.

Only now did his feet make soft pats across cooler flooring, a blue glow lighting the way ahead and chasing away the warmth of fires and sconces. His face and cloth were cast in an eerie pale glow from the light source as he entered the room a few steps and stilled to gaze down upon a single glowing orb rotating slowly about five inches from the floor on its own. There was nothing visible in it aside from a blue snowy fabric, and it was silent but for a ghostly humming. It was in the corner of an alcove, out of the way, but able to be greeted upon entering the maze of a chamber that stretched its walls before bending into another part of the room or rooms. Eufemiusz went right, ignoring it as vague figures appeared in the shifting snows before these faded. A trio of arches opened the wall to his right, letting air and night into the Craig.

His figure made a silhouette in passing these, due to the light emitted by the globe.

It is at this point that the Craig should be identified of its internal structure within a tall, convex, accompanying wall that gave the external appearance of one contiguous mound. There were tall beehivelike extensions within the Craig’s exterior fortification, connected by channels laid by the stones set down to establish the foundations years ago. Eufemiusz had entered from the west, but followed the tunnel in the wall around south, before turning into the first beehive at this direction. In the second beehive of chambers to the east, facing the scoop of the southern wall of the Craig was Cuillean’s cell, molded near the top of the comb labyrinth. Had there been a window out the lower half of his chamber cell, he would have seen the slip of a shadow against the eerie blue light, but he did not, and only could gaze upward through the slats of his bars to an open sky when he woke from fits of sleep. He shifted in his bloodstained, stiff clothes, adjusted from waking, to try and return back to his uncomfortable slumber, ill at ease, seated against the wall. When a hand laid upon his shoulder and departed, this startled him awake.

He had turned fleetly, eyes wide, mouth agape, as he rotated to his right, staring up at who had come into his cell as silent as air.

A Drell in hooded monk garb, taller than he’d ever seen, smiled down at him with the expression of a serpent, his crests smooth and brown or red as leather on top of his skull. Cuillean could not make out his colors well by the spoil of moons’ light still making its way into his cell. He held his hands up, as if to defend himself, nearly cowering.

The Drell had the face of a hooded V, with large eye ridges, a lightly colored patak, and full lips that continued to grin at his discomfort and evident fear.

“So you are the one who killed Borachio.”He waited until Cuillean’s stained sleeves and flaring fingers lowered down to reveal bright, tremulous eyes. “Good.”

He knelt next to him, the door left open, and draped two wide-sleeved arms that resembled cloth rags of brown across his high knee. He hulked and hunched forward, looking predatorily towards Cuillean. The gaze went down, then up to Cuillean’s crests.

He could see green hands poking from the Drell’s ragged sleeves, but Cuillean did not have the impression that the Drell was a prisoner. Maybe a guard, or an emissary. . . Or something more lurk-some, though he was handsome in face and well-fed, so that despite his angular features of mouth and jaw, he was healthy, strong, and sharp-witted.

When he smiled, his teeth looked like they could cut through glass with words alone.

He adjusted his arms so that his hands, large and long with sharpened nails, crossed together, cupped one over the other on his knee. His smile faded as he raised his head, tilting his chin upward to expose a sliver of dark tebris, preparing to speak. “You are Eufemiusz’s son. . . What is your name?”

“Cuillean,” the frightened Drell replied softly.

“Cuillean. . . Cuillean Kiross, you are now Serepta tierra, which means you are no better than a slave.” He said this as he lowered his chin, eyes narrowing with distaste. “Your father was a thane, however, and his reputation sustains you in good grace. . . There is hope you will serve out your sin under the intake of Bor Kratos and his kindred. . . Though your build makes you. . .Unique.” He angled his crests to the right in further contemplation of the young, strapping Drell. “Yes,” he said, more to himself, sounding pleased. “Yes. . . There is potential.” As he said this, Cuillean’s eyes locked on his, then suddenly turned away. He gazed down at his blood-saturated pants, stiff and dry.

His father? _His_ father? A thane! No way he could have been like the performers outside. . . The ones performing in the espowyes.

He was speechless. He had no idea what this meant, nor if it were even true.

His father had spoken of the thanes with reverence, however. He had shown his knowledge when he named them to Cuillean.

“Eufemiusz Kiross is a _legend_ ,” the stranger declared sibilantly, as if reading his thoughts and seeing the disbelief on his face. _Could he?_ Cuillean wondered.With a hint of deep respect in the Drell’s voice, he ominously shared, “You would not believe the bloodshed of his past, if I told you of your father’s true identity.”

Cuillean’s eyes hardened, steady on the bloodstain formed over his pants’ leg. “I’m listening.”Utterly amazed.

The Drell breathed a raspy laugh, short and shallow. “Before the age of seventeen,” he leaned forward, eyes widening as he rolled his hand out to hold up all three fingers but his thumb, “Eufemiusz killed off three warring treasachs on his own.” His smile was accompanied by the waft of dancing fingers. “Gone. All in three. . . Days’. . . Time.” His bared teeth reflected the light through the window, enjoying Cuillean’s incredulous expression. _Youth is not so difficult to impress._ The Drell settled back against the wall, his smile spreading. “They called him _Dragomir_. . . Shade of Death. . . His shadow alone forespoke death and destruction. . . Three. . . Great. . . Tyrannus. . . Families. . . Razed each one down, night by night, blood and fire.” He halted, regarding the young Drell before suddenly glancing at his fingers in feigned distraction. “And then he disappeared,” he said simply, adding to Cuillean’s blood-pounding ears, “seventeen years to this day. . . It is said he wed an Ilori of the great clan Lela. . . A troublesome brood connected to dijana ( _witches_ ) and luijzika ( _warriors_ ).”

The eyes reattached themselves to Cuillean, who kept his head down, eyes averted, suddenly thinking of Dahna and how much threat she was under.

The Drell’s left patak curved up in a faint smile before he turned his face right ways, his long hand scooping in a fluid wave, fingertips pointed elegantly towards the southern wall. “He disappeared like a shade does in the night. . .” His smiling gaze turned cruelly back to Cuillean’s bent head. “And now you’re here. . . Fifteen years old. . . But surely there must be another. . .”

He waited, smiling. Cuillean willed himself to look up and at him, to hide Dahna behind his own eyes and cover her truth from this stranger’s insane knowledge. The eyes and smile widened at him.

“Surely if your lies hold true, you see there is one of me, not two.”

The Drell nodded his head at this, his smile tightening, chilling, then fading.

“Surely, I must. . .”

His face took on a bored, blank stare, the wrist in its sleeve balancing on the covered knee, his right falling to his side. The palm above the knee rotated in a brief supplication.

“Stand. We must travel. You are to be taken to your new kahana.”

He glanced right, then back at Cuillean, whose body was rigid as stone as he faced the Drell who wore a gentling, dry smile.

“Kahana? Why. . . Why can’t I stay here?” Cuillean gestured outward from himself, only the cell around him, though he meant in the Craig, the crandal, or Umay. It would mean he would be within hope’s reach of both Dahna and his father.

The Drell’s smile withered into a demeaning curl of indignation as he waved his head ‘no’ and stopped to focus on Cuillean. “You wish to stay here? In this cell? You’re to be trained to be a thane in place of your father. You must go, receive the proper tutelage in Mercede.” The Drell collected his fingers together and leaned forward, eyes suddenly bright and invasive. “Is there someone else _besides_ your father?”

Cuillean was silent a moment, then said firmly, “No. . . My father—I need to speak to him—“

“No longer within our realm,” the Drell replied, cutting him off abrupt.

He stood, dark ragged robes brushing the stone floor. “Your father does not succeed you. He gave his life to promote your longevity. You are now somewhat patriarch. . . Of your tribe. . . Whatever there is that remains. . . But don’t worry. Whoever’s left is now Serepta to Bor and his kin. If there is anyone at all back at the cottus in Thorolf, we have already sent a thane to collect those who are unaware of their new tierra. They will either return with him in the morning or die.”

“No.”

Cuillean pushed forwards and up, quickly stepping toward the Drell.

The wedge of the Drell’s thumb and forefingers against the top of Cuillean’s throat impacted his trachea, jarring the big, burlsome, young Drell until he fell backwards against the stone wall behind him.

The movement had been nonexistent. The Drell’s hand was at Cuillean’s throat as though it had always been there, waiting while they were talking.

Cuillean slid down against the wall, clumsily gasping for breath, left arm scraping against the stone to steady his descent, the other holding his throat beneath his jaw. He rasped out and in, sucking at air, gaining little.

The Drell, still stood by the open door with yellow glow along the length of his robes, enfolded his arms, hands disappearing into the ratty brown sleeving. He watched Cuillean struggle, face narrowing with pity.

Cuillean grated out bursting breaths, “Where’s. . . My. . . Father. . .”

The Drell’s face seemed to grow longer, his lips moving in reply, head cocking left over a tall shoulder. “Last I saw, he hung from the staff above the Craig. Tied himself to it even. He’ll hang a long time. . . Big neck and all. . .”

“No. . .” Cuillean puffed his lips, cheeks in anger, wrath, agonized, “Nnnnoooo!”

Teeth baring, his lips curled apart as he made a hoarse growl and half-lunged, slapping heavily onto the floor and reeds.

“I’ll. . . Kill you. . .”

“I don’t think so,” the Drell said unworriedly, only glancing up to look out the door at his left and to signal someone.

Shadows began to move and grow against him, rising suddenly as though they’d been seated and waiting.

Cuillean struggled to push himself up off his elbows, canted forward, and reached a shaking arm at his tormentor, the object of his current hatred. He fell on his face, wheezing for air, the pressure of his own weight on his chest unbearable. His face was turned left, tebris pressed against the reeds, puffing for oxygen.

Blackness at the edges, lightheaded feeling.

He breathed rapidly through his nose, useless and shallow, and struggled his hands out from under him as two shadows filled the doorway.

The apathetic faces of two big Kerhasi burrell gazed down upon him, as did the Drell in the robe who had inflicted his torture.

As Cuillean dragged himself forward, whistling for air on his elbows and knees, he extended another arm, hand grasping at the robes, but this fell. Rolling onto his left side, his arm swung vainly clear of the thin fabric.

He couldn’t catch a decent breath.

He almost started crying.

The three Drell above stared down at him, still apathetic, still unmoving.

He who was robed, standing a head taller than the others at full height, shook his head sadly as Cuillean made another vain effort to fight and reach for the loose folds with his right fingers leaving from his throat, while choking less air. The Drell above inhaled easily, lifting his shoulders, and expelled a long, bragging exhalation loudly through his mouth as he boringly observed Cuillean’s meaningless progress towards him. His red-brown crests rocked from side to side disparagingly as he slid his sandaled thong away from the curling fingers and avoided his robes being touched altogether.

 _So hard to breathe,_ Cuillean thought, desperation eating at his mind. He vaguely was aware of the words being spoken over him as he rolled onto his back and clawed at his pinched trachea.

“Believe me,” the Drell said, nodding his head now sympathetically as the burrell stepped in on either side of Cuillean’s supine body, preparing to lift and drag him out of the cell. His large eye ridges raised and tilted downwards at the corners in mercy. “When I heard it was your father willing to swing himself from the staff, I was genuinely chagrinned. . . There will never be another like him. . . Not even you, though he has sworn you will pay your worth a hundred fold. . . His _progeny_. . . Rather optimistic,” he continued, watching Cuillean be lifted to expose his neck to him. “You may never match the level of thane he was. . . But we shall certainly try and see.”

His hand unveiled from the sleeve to cross warm under Cuillean’s jaw. With measured pressure, his fingers compressed the structure of hard inner cartilage through Cuillean’s tebris. Depressing with a shallow _click_ and _crunch_ , Cuillean’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull as he tore in oxygen, fresh and full, painful even, unto his craving lungs while still being held, supported by his arms and the pair of burrell either side of him in the doorway.

The thane sighed and added with another shake of his grieving, long jaw, “I can tell this one is going to take a lot of time, work, and stamina.”


	23. Chapter 23

Two bare feet stepped onto the stones before the burrell carrying Cuillean from his holding cell, the light casting from behind to illuminate the others while leaving the pale clothed figure’s front and face in darkness. No one looked up, carrying the younger, heavier Drell out backward by his arms, heels and pants dragging over the smooth flooring of stones. A passage wound into darkness beyond them, and the room they pulled Cuillean into was shadowed.

The tall thane in the ragged garb stepped to the cell’s entrance as Cuillean’s feet cleared the cell frame, and in that rigid arch, the thane looked directly at the shadow waiting before the firelight. His hands were hidden in his sleeves, joined again. The expression of the thane was neither surprise, delight, or displeasure. The burrell had neither noticed him, focused they were on the stunned Drell in their arms, partly blocked now by their white and gold-red overshirts, sabers and sabeeha prongs, battseeyon clubs held tight to their hatachs.

The thane, appearing longer now, addressed the shadow, whose edges were emblazoned by red light. The burrell both snapped their heads up to the thane, fleetly following his gaze to the stone hall left of the doorway.

“You are here. . . What took you so long,” he added with a cunning smile.

The burrell both dropped Cuillean, who landed hard on the floor as the shadow’s feet strode forward, forcing them back by their own fear and respect. Both burrell raised up their hands and fell to their knees, groveling pronate with their foreheads on the grit, arms extended out with fingerpads pressing into the hardness and making sure not to touch Cuillean. The cream vestment came to a soft wave and stilled as the Drell’s head turned towards the thane still standing in the doorway.

“This is how you take my word, Narcissus,” Eufemiusz snapped through narrow teeth. “By lying to me before I take the staff and sending thanes to seek the truth in my words. I should cut the head of your treasach before I die.”

Thane to thane, Narcissus dropped his chin slightly to his tebris and nodded once. “I am sorry, sered. It was necessary,” he said, raising his face and putting it forward some, freeing a hand from his sleeve and turning it palm up to Cuillean pushing himself higher the floor, rolling onto his left elbow to nurse his throat. “The Hyrrokkin would not let me take the word of a thane. Not even from you.”

“What is your purpose, thane. Remind me.”

Narcissus showed one small flinch as his hand turned back to his robes, fluid and graceful.

“Not to interfere.”

Eufemiusz’s figure stood still, hands slightly curled and loosened. After a heavy pause, energy focused through his face on the opposite thane, he redirected his body language towards the young Drell staring up at him on his seat from the stones. His mouth worked, and a rasping throat produced both injured and relieved words as he made forward to stand.

The burrell both kneeled upwards, the sheer slide of well oiled blades rolling out from their habards. Curved tips arced up under Cuillean’s throat, and now the burrell looked from the young Drell to his father, who had still not moved. Cuillean looked at all the blades and faces, then stared at Eufemiusz. _Dragomir_. . .

“It is how it should be, Cuillean,” his father replied to the concerned expression of his son with the voice of one in control of the situation, not deterred by the reaction of both burrell to Cuillean’s attempt to rise towards his father. “It is common for sons to attempt to kill the patriarchs of the treasachs.” He made an indicative gesture of his hand towards the two burrell. “Their reaction is programmed.”

Cuillean made another cycle with his eyes and face over the Drell and blades, landing on his father’s face shadowing down at him. “I don’t understand. . . They—he said you were. . . Thane. . . Is it true?” Cuillean’s chin lifted above the sweeping blades, his red tebral folds filling with fire and sconce lighting.

Eufemiusz nodded, solemn. “It is true.”

Cuillean’s expression did not change—disbelief, shock, confusion. _Shall I feel somewhat relieved? He is alive at least. . . But he keeps speaking of his death._ “They say I am to take your place. . . I am Serepta. . . You were. . . Hung,” his gaze lifted to the opposing thane and returned, “from the Craig’s walls above the entrance. . . Father.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Eufemiusz said, lowering his voice and chin towards his son.

 _Dahna came,_ was Cuillean’s immediate response, determined from the way in which his father gazed at him. His father had a way of implying what was unspoken through a stare alone, and Cuillean knew to distinguish between the stares meant for him, and those speaking of his sister in disapproval. Cuillean did not dare reveal that he interpreted this meaning from his father’s dark eyes and setting of eye scales, but it calmed his twisting gut at all of the fresh unknowns. That Dahna was alive, here, in the Craig or in the crandal, and had acted on her own to come to their aid. _Dahna, what are you up to? How would you have known to come seeking us out? . . . Someone must be helping her. . ._ The skeptical squint in his right eyelid raised as his lips slightly parted.

Eufemiusz carefully turned his face a few degrees to the right, eyes fastened to Cuillean’s, intense.

Narcissus observed the unspoken exchange, even devoid of tebral nuances, and drew father and son’s attention with his voice and hand motion beneath concealing sleeves. _Interesting. . . Both father and son are attuned to each other. They hear my voice, but look to my hands, though I have not revealed anything. . . Perhaps Eufemiusz has not curdled with age and domestic housedrell duties._ He smiled disarmingly and said: “I’m sure you’re ready, sereds, to meet your new masters among mithra and Mercede.” The thane revealed his left hand then, curling his claws towards Cuillean, indicating both burrell should now rise. To Cuillean’s father he spoke, eventually turning his face to the thane. “If you should have a grievance about the manner in which your word was taken to mean, best take it to the local barrin.” A silent,punctuating pause, his gaze settled upon the other thane. “You will find Hercules in the chamber below the Audhilde,” and looking back towards Cuillean, lips devoid of smile, “taking care of new inductees.” Cuillean thought he observed a tensing of the thane’s right lip corner, a hint of disgust, if he understood it. “If you go now, he will be finishing with the second and third ones. Easier to catch him mid-orgasm, if you intend to kill him, sered.” He said this to Eufemiusz, while looking into Cuillean’s widened eyes.

Eufemiusz’s lips parted in a disappointed inhale. He let the breath out, before turning to Cuillean’s gaze.

Waving the two burrell aside with a dismissive sweep of his right hand, the old thane came forward towards his son, his features and vestment more clear in the shadow now that he was close by, the backlight not so hiding. He squeezed Cuillean’s left, thick upper arm over his blue shirt, the young Drell stood now and blinking incomprehensibly at his father. In that moment, Cuillean realized his father was come to say goodbye.

His move was sudden, taking the pale front of the sacrificial cloth into his dark green fists. Eufemiusz held up his hands, palms commanding the tense burrell to back down as his son, so strong, failed to even somewhat budge him with the tugging on his dress-front. “No. No. Did Dahna know you do this?”

Eufemiusz made no reaction with his hands or his face. Merely gazed on and spoke: “It is decided, young Drell of mine.” His left hand cupped the rough edges of his son’s face, the right falling over the tensioned fist wielding the fabric of his pale garb, firm and strong over the young Drell’s tighening grip. “Stop, son,” he spoke, gentle, “and go to your new life a man-drell, not a child.” Eufemiusz’s broad, virile face warmed with a scant smile at Cuillean, who coiled the muscles in his big arms and hauled himself forward to his father’s face. The Drell were nearly equal in height—Cuillean was big for his age.

And angry.

He hissed through his baring teeth, nearly nose to nose with the assassin. Growling, “You said you would be there! You said you would protect us! For mother! For ourselves! Why? Why are you doing this?” His wide eyes turned to glance at the thane by the cell and the burrell left and right of him, waiting for his father’s orders. “Why when they listen to you as though you were Govannon, father? You—I don’t understand what’s happening. . . You. . . You kept secrets from us all this time.”

As his voice tapered off, the grip lessening, his father replied: “Mists and shadow, son. What was meant to protect you was also meant to protect the others. You will go now.” He nodded to the burrell, who moved to wrap thick biceps and forearms around the fighting Drell attempting to wrench free and regain his father. “Take him to Mercede. I can no longer protect you any better than the Kerhasla protected your mother. Now go, son, and go well. I will tell your mother everything she missed, and we will wait for you.”

“Your time is not yet,” Narcissus joined in, speaking to assist the troubled father who now took broad, swift steps passed his son wringing against both burrell, staring and gaping after him who departed into the next hall, on his way Cuillean could only guess where. Narcissus gazed left after the shadowing broad shoulders and vestment of the big thane, his hands still held among his sleeves. “We were fortunate to have one last word from him before he finally makes his departure.” He faced Cuillean, whose efforts sagged in the strength and support of the burrells’ arms. Heartache, disbelief, and betrayal on his face, echoed with the father’s handsome features and the mother’s accenting traces. “As for you, you will become what he has left for you. . . His legacy. . . Bring him to the kirtana and be away with him. I will accompany when I have seen to the other one.”

Cuillean’s eyes opened, having closed in hurt and grief. His strength renewed as he thrust forth, nearly dragging the burrell to the thane gazing down at him.

“You will leave my sister alone,” Cuillean commanded, his voice a lighter bite of his father’s.

Narcissus turned to the right, his gaze slitting at Cuillean as the burrell regained immobilizing him with an arm lock over his shoulders and around his neck. “Oh, I will leave her alone. . . But I will see for myself the daughter of Lela and Kiross thanes. . . And perhaps warn her of the war that is to come. . . You would like that, wouldn’t you? If I could also bring to her a word or two from you, what would you like to give the messenger?”

Cuillean’s face fell as he realized what a fool he had been, giving out Dahna’s affirmation of existence to the thane and in front of both burrell. He sagged against their arms, hanging his head to the right and back as he closed and opened his eyes, the light shining off the porous smooth leather of his patak and bachir. “Tell her. . . Tell her I’m sorry. . . I’m so sorry. . .” he said, shaking his crests from side to side as his chin lower downed, pinching the tebris folded against his throat and jaw. He then spit, not in disrespect, but as another suppressed rack came from his chest, hurting his throat, and pitifully wept tears in front of them. “Father. . . Father. . .” he called, louder each time, voice torn and agonized, then summoning strength from his lungs and belly, he shouted forth a recriminating lament. “ _Father_!”

Dahna and the Morthwyl spun, hearing Cuillean’s lamentful wail bouncing off stones and echoing out of the Craig from somewhere in its honeycomb labyrinth. Her white blue face looked behind them, against Kalare as they made their way through the streets of the crandal, fading in and out of alleys with a large rooker that was finding it easier to guide them towards her offspring waiting to the southern border of the city. Dahna’s muted red eyes fluttered, and she turned her face to the Morthwyl, who glanced quickly back and forth between the Craig’s silhouette and her, abruptly shaking his head to discourage her. He drew up the cowl over his skull, letting his eyes be red and staring.

“I have to go back. Even if it’s my father’s orders. . . Cuillean. . . Please. . .”

She placed her hands one over the other on Kalare’s furry side, moving backward, then fingers left altogether as she reeled counterclockwise took off, the Morthwyl grasping for her over Kalare’s back, his eyes wide and red, lips partly open. Looking up at Kalare craning her neck to gaze down at him, he gazed off after his beloved, black hands furrowed over the rooker’s soft back.

Suddenly gritting his teeth, he thumped the rooker on the meat of her rump and set the dilean off on her own, parting with her to run in pursuit of Dahna. The rooker took off at a gallop, white fur and haunches shivering with each scratching bound, moving rapidly feet together before spreading apart as the head and neck lurched with the spine, moving on towards the scent of her dileans, alone through the crandal.

Dahna ran, looking straight ahead, only thinking of Cuillean. How could she give up on him? Her father must have lost his mind to go walking to his death for trivial tierra etiquette. She was no daughter of Kerhasi. She was no daughter at all. She was an Ilori, and the rules did not pertain to her. No, Dahna of the free will, Dahna of the fire. Fire that burned unrestrained and consumed what it desired.

If it could only reach it, what it so desired.

She bent her brow scales forwards, white above her jewel eyes, and pumping her shoulders, driving the balls of her feet into the white packed stones, she pound out two more steps before leaping up to grab a balcony, bending her elbows and shoulders to haul upwards, reach with her slender, muscled white arm, gleaming blue moon light in the dark, and gripping with her right hand the next neweled ledge to pull herself higher up, legs bending, feet purchasing, halak unhindering her climb. She reached with her left and crawled higher, gaining the bumpy roofline and pulling herself onto the sloped slate top, and both bending and straightening her knees, took off in the moonlight across the cotti landscape above the streets, light as a bat’s wings and soundless but for a slap of feet here and there when she jumped across alleyways to land on opposite roof ledges.

As she crossed the air between two roofs, part of halak loose and trailing a foot behind her, two heads turned and looked right above their shoulders. Though a moth could have made slightly less sound than Dahna, there were eyes with sight swifter than insect wings. Two shadows darted passed the pair, moving at blur speed along the lower street line. As the first two heads turned about and ran out of the alley, taking left after them, the Morthwyl’s blackness leapt high over the roofs farther east, only a moon’s gleam touching his back, again free of Dahna’s robes.

Dahna kept running and looked to her left as she did. The cotti tops spanned for miles west of her position, moving in slow motion as she made her way above the crandal towards the Craig. She could see the divides, the dips where cottis were separated by streets and alleys. The air was cool on her face, and there was something refreshing about being above, gaining roof by roof closer to her brother. How she would find him, she could only hope for Fate to guide her.

A black shadow landed in front of her, Dahna startled from her thoughts. She put her hands out to feel against smooth chest, and a dark grip snatched her right wrist, lifting it up. Her chest and left palm instead smacked against him.

Ire-filled, the Morthwyl glared down at her, his eyes red and hard, but then softening as she tugged and tried to loose her wrist free. She pushed on his chest, then stilled, realizing the more she pulled, the tighter he held. Dahna stepped her feet together and looked evenly into his face. Her chest slowly rose and fell, hardly winded.

The Morthwyl leaned forward, but suddenly both their faces turned west. Dahna’s eyes, once narrowed, now opened wide, and wider.

One form, hooded, had just taken a step forward on the same roof as them. A second hood, followed by shoulders and lean body, cloaked and covered, moved up to its left. A third hood, emerged from beneath the roofline, throwing an elbow over the ridge, and climbed up on the first one’s right. A fourth followed to the right of that one.

The Morthwyl pushed Dahna to his left and behind him, drawing out both blades from his thighs, one full breadth and one broken. He closed with the first figure, who reached up, sabeeha all ready, catching the first slice in the prongs, while the other drifted through him and retracted. Darkness spurted from behind the cloth as the Morthwyl whipped the sabeeha away on the long end of blade, spun, moving forwards, bringing the top blade down and catching the next weapon before driving his broken blade into the open face of the following cowl. He turned back again, moving north across the rooftop, blades swirling in an invisible circle, the third figure stepping backwards as his or her colleague attacked the Morthwyl from behind with another pair of sabeeha, feinted, and broke away east, pursuing after Dahna. The Morthwyl reverse gripped his blade, cutting a figure in the air of his northern opponent’s face, too close for comfort and setting the one off balance, then reached with his right arm, freed of the broken saber which he had thrown, spinning high, high, high into the air, and grabbed the trailing cloak of the racing figure, yanking backwards and returning him or her to where it had started with a choking grunt, landing hard and heavy, supine on the roof. By the time the organic yo-yo had completed, the blade had fallen, somersaulting tip over hilt through the air, and was caught again by the Morthwyl who instantly twirled left, slicing with the left arm blade, impaling the other Drell with his right, which came down as a stake through chest muscle and bone. As loud as a gourd releasing a suctioned knife, the broken blade, hand, and arm came back in a parallel sweep of their feet as the Morthwyl met the last rising fighter in his teness with the puncture of a broken, chipped blade.

Pale fists pumping up before her eyes, Dahna saw the open space of the street ahead of her, only three rows away from the Craig’s espowyes. She could smell the dilean pen nearby. Metering out her next steps, she left the roofline, flying like a dancer across the height of cottis above street level, one knee tucked in a cycle to progress towards extending for the far rooftop. A shadow pelted down the street from the west as she made the apex of the arc, launching high to block out her pale blue sight as it bound to her and weighed her down from the midair contact.

They rolled, Dahna gasping with a startled cry as the dark robes bound around her. She turned to her back, drawing her feet up as she pushed the heavy chest off, palms pressed against smooth, contoured muscle, and gritting her teeth, heaved a firm push with the flats of her feet, gaining a foot of space in which to scrabble backward. The shadow of robes lunged at her again, this time covering her in sweat, stinking filth, hands grabbing for her in cruel places.

“Get off of me!” Dahna reached into her hatach, pulled out a handle that cradled well into her palm, and as she withdrew, sliced upwards into where she could smell the strength of his scent in the tender folds of tebris. Hot liquid coursed down onto her neck and chest, white pale moon beam scales suddenly covered in the darker, richer, heavier weight of blood. She held onto her knife, pushing up against the heavy shoulders and heaving against the body, hands trailing over her waist’s tebral folds and brushing at her abs until the foul reek was removed. She rolled onto her hands and knees and stepped up as lithe as her vertebrate self could let her after being brought down from mid air collision onto stone. She hopped a small pain, placed her foot down, and did a scan of her body mentally to sense for injury. She tested her weight on each foot, then tucked her scalpea, the well-carved handle and blade she had favored for her recent opponent’s throat, and inserted this in its home at the back of her hip’s hatach. Taking a few more steps, Dahna gazed left over the cotti roofs at the Craig’s welcome sight, and turned to jump and climb another set of self-identified holds her eyes had picked out.

Footsteps to her left, soft and padding like a feline, caused Dahna to stop and turn her face to the source.

The Morthwyl calmly approached her, his black hiding any distinction of injury or blood he might have sustained or received from his victims. The halak swept above his feet, not touching the ground, and his blades were in his hands. He did not look at her at first, only gazing upward at the Craig, but when she allowed him to draw within six inches of her shoulder, his grey lidded gaze swept down and opened red to the blood on her neck and chest. He sniffed delicately, before closing the first layer of protection against his eyes.

:(His blood does not suit you.)

Dahna’s eyes widened, followed by the slow curl of her pearl lips into a smile.

The Morthwyl offered his left hand to the roofline, looking from the blood to her eyes, then to follow his hand’s direction up. She stepped ahead of him, slow, then two fast measured ones before leaping nimbly to the next balcony and catching hold to swing her bending left leg over, sliding and melding into the wall like a serpent, as he, nimbly and with ease, followed, joining her only a second before she was already hauling herself to the next level. And then beyond that. One after the other, like that they climbed, reaching the top of the cotti structures and disappearing over the roofline.

At the top, Dahna stood with her chest turned towards the Morthwyl standing like a sentinel close to her heart. She gazed ahead, then glanced and lingered on the Morthwyl, who turned his face to her and nodded. Dahna began to make her way over the rooftops again, crossing the final three streets with the Morthwyl guarding her this time. They climbed down to white stones and up to each row of cotti roofs, finalizing their straight cut towards the Craig’s monolith of presence. As before, Dahna’s figure stood out against it, rising and falling over the lines of homes and shops, and the Morthwyl blended into it, but made a dark stain against the paleness of the streets and cotti walls.

In the espowyes, they turned east and walked to the oceanside entrance, the Morthwyl gazing ahead as Dahna’s crests turned down, her face upwards at the Craig’s surface. They had come out of the crandal, into the near eastern part of the Craig’s open plaza, and were turning, following the circular groove. As they moved further to the bend of the ‘Rock’, an opening in the crandal’s wall could be seen as a tapering wedge, letting out into the view of water, docks leading away to the flat darkness and smell of ocean, bordered by flat geometric stones placed or carved along a path delineating the rising ramp that moved upward into a shallow plateau and leveling out towards numerous docks lined by kirtana, the Serepta ships, dirgerunners for hunting among splashing waves, and the greater galiena, meant for war and travel over the abyss. They floated, moored against the far plankings and hourglass carved figures of wood holds for tying great ropes to. Dahna felt a dipping nausea in her belly as the wind from the water blew against the blood on her tebris and chest, cooling her more in those places than anywhere else on her body.

The Morthwyl silently jogged away from her to a reservoir, built shallow in the espowyes leading to the water. It was invisible to the eye, though he knew where to find it, and from it, cupped his hands tight to carry clear water back to her. He splashed this on her chest and neck, quickly slapping and rubbing down the darkened blood. His warm hands on her tebral folds and chest felt alarmingly good to Dahna. He could feel her heart beat quicker at his touch, and slowed over the pale channel between firm flesh in the middle of her chest. His grey eyelids unfolded, red slits peeping out, before quickly resuming their shielded states. He withdrew his hand, covered in water, stale blood, and the warmth of her. He turned to the eastern docks, as she faced this same direction, and both continued to walk on towards the water and ships, listening in hope of detecting Cuillean’s voice again, or the sound of a kirtana being loaded and prepped for disembarkation. The sky seemed breathtakingly spellbinding out over the sea as it had over the dunes and rooftops, but different in that far off, its stars reflected off the calm waves, two twin moons shifting on the wet, rolling surface.

:(Wait.)

The Morthwyl held out his palm, guarding Dahna from making a further step. She glanced down at his black arm, then up, northeast, in the direction of his gaze. The grey eyelids did not unseal. He stood very still.

:(What is it?)

He nodded his black chin towards the sea.

:(There is a ship leaving the docks, five piers over. Do you see?)

He glanced at her. Dahna’s body was leaning forward, tiptoeing on the balls of her feet as she squinted. Brushing passed his arm, she began to lightly jog up to the ramp, joining the plateau of white stone that led her to the wooden platforms. Her pace faltered, stepping uncertainly, and then she broke into another jog, bending left and following the thick, heavy planks trussed and nailed firm to large posts extending from the water, where it was clearer now to see, if one gazed down, the white silt underneath aquamarine ripples of shadow and light, phosphorescent organisms swiftly winding and swimming in the shallows. Dahna’s light jog was unique in that she did not rush. She merely moved easy with the grace of resigning one to a bloom of reality that finalized in loss. As she bent again on the docks, moving right towards the farthest pier with loose arms and soft, hopping feet, she knew in her heart that Cuillean was on that bowl of a shape moving away with its oars rising and falling in the waters. Her white lithe figure jogged out as far to the end of pier she could and stopped, stepping up onto the hourglass post for anchoring against with ships and ropes, and she stood near naked and solitary on its curved cap.

Dahna’s crests and shoulders caught the light of the moons, making her clear to anyone who looked back from the kirtana navigating northeast into the bay. One such pair of eyes turned and stared at the pale aura standing alone, raised high on the docks, and raised his eye ridges in surprise.

“By Kala, they say mithra dance on these waters. . . But the quay?” Several others joined him, placing their hands to support them as they leaned over the thick, sea smoothened rails of hardy wood, and they, too, took in the sight of the lone, moon-illuminated figure signaturing their departure from the Craig.

“Looks to be a good omen, aya?” one Drell said, not gazing away at his comrades. He placed his thick, purplish forearms on the newel underneath him on the railing, and one knee bent as he put his weight forward.

“Not that I ever heard of mithra being on the land being a good omen to those bent for the seireadan.” The first one spoke again, his gravel textured voice rolling out smooth and lighter than the other’s.

“Hey, sprat! Come here and check this out,” another of the group called, beckoning for a large, broad-shouldered Drell to get off his haunches and walk over, looking dejected in his head hang and shoulder limpness, to gaze upon that which they called omen, mithra, and good fortune.

Cuillean seemed to move in a daze through the sea-Drell standing aside for him as he walked, a symbol for forlorn loss and hopelessness, to the aft of rafters on the kirtana. As his gaze lifted from the wet, sea rotten boards beneath his bare feet, dried, stiff blood still on his clothes, he hunkered forward and supported his heaviness on the railing. Raising his gaze, moon filling his face, he peered to what the other Drell was pointing at across the water, back towards the Craig. His four eyelids squinted, blinked once, twice, then widened.

_Dahna. . . It has to be._

“Aya, I never seen a mithra before who couldn’t walk on water,” a Drell behind him said, waving off the vision and turning to go back into the inner ship.

“Mithra, indeed,” Cuillean murmured. He pushed off the rail with both arms and raised his blue sleeves overhead, starting to wave these slowly like an angel from the aft of the ship. “Might as well give her a greeting and hope for good luck.”

He and those with him witnessed the return of the wave with white arms glanced by moonlight, mirroring back at him like a vision above the perch on the pier. She looked like an angel, a siha, and for Cuillean, his heart was both saddened and lifted. _If she can make her way to the Craig alone this far, I have a feeling she will be okay._ A smile affected his lips as he waved once more, crossing his strong arms above his crests and lowering these back to grip the railing. The other Drell studied him a while, then turned their faces to the distant, pale vision waving steadily on, only one arm now in goodbye. Cuillean remained leaning against that rail as she became a speck, and then simply blurred into the distance of blue, a tinged division of darkness between heavens and water, his eyes ever where she last existed.

And Cuillean did not leave his spot on the kirtana even when he was no longer sure if where he was looking was still facing the same point where she’d been.

Dahna waved for longer than she should have. The Morthwyl was on the wood plankings, keeping guard while she watched after the diminishing dark spot on the bay. When it joined the horizon and was no longer discernible, she turned away and hopped down from the cap. She walked along the planks, face downward to the firm and dry boards beneath her feet, heading back to the Morthwyl who glanced at her, and resumed his monitoring of the Craig and the surrounding city that emptied into its plaza.

A traveling troop of Kerhasi burrell entered the espowyes from a northern street and crossed along the white stones before the Craig, but they did not notice Dahna’s pale figure among the ocean and sky backdrop.

The Morthwyl held her tight, her palms and line of body hidden in front of his tallness and breadth, her head lain nestled against his tebris. With his back to the Craig, the gleam of moon on his shoulder and head, he made no more than an impression of being part of the floating ships lining the docks.

He cupped her shoulder blades under his palms, opened and closed his eyes as she breathed onto his neck and chest. They were aware of the burrell moving through the espowyes, but the Morthwyl was confident he could hide her. Dahna closed her eyes, thinking what a world to be alone in, to be owned by none, wanted by so many, and only to the Morthwyl did she give her skin to touch. And she loved him. Maybe. . . Just maybe there could be hope for them and Cuillean.

As she pulled her head off his tebris, she turned her face left, and leaned further, peering over his black shoulder at a figure appeared suddenly on the edge of docks. Dahna’s eyes widened before her face pinched and she was joined by the Morthwyl’s grey eyelids unfolding apart and down, red eyes revealing with the turn of his shoulder in response to Dahna’s shift away, and to stand in front of him.

Narcissus smiled, his chin and head tucking into his neck. His hands clasped together out in front of his face as he swayed his head gently from side to side. His hands wrung before him as he admired the two staring back from the docks, the Morthwyl hard to see but clearly tall and well-engineered, the red eyes evident, and the graceful, deerlike composure of the albino drellahna setting one foot forward across her knee in front of her. She was as tall as the Morthwyl, thinner, but no waif. A dancer’s muscled and toned body, the perfect physique of symmetrical grace, and behind her, a coveted creature few had ever seen. Narcissus nearly clapped with glee. _And an Ordained! The bread of the Lela line and Kiross geneaology! And she’s obviously matched to none other than a rare Morthwyl! Kala mithra, be praised!_ He set steps forward, lowering his hands, palms out to welcome them.

“Kala. . . Look at you two,” he said, smiling and not striking them with any urge to return the same greeting, “Morthwyl, here. . . In Umay. . . And you. . . Dahna. . .” At the sound of her name, the drellahna stiffened, her crests lifting in alarm much as a deer would. Her eyelids fluttered as she glanced down, seeing the Morthwyl out the corner of her eye. “Of the Kiross-Lela lines. . .” His clawed fingers curled together, uniquely yellow, green, and purple in the moons’ light. “Exquisite cross breeding. . . What color. . . And surely capably taught by mastering minds, by the judge of that you destroyed two thanes already. . .” His dark eye ridges raised promptly and dropped. “Benwick and Quarrie will not be making it back in the next day or so, will they? No. . .“ His eye ridges briefly pulled together, fingers collecting to each hand. “Quarrie lies dead in the streets of crandal. . . And Benwick?” He pursed his lips, _chutting_ through his teeth as he shook his head and continued to set each sandal forward until the periphery of dock was at his toes and both Dahna and the Morthwyl were a leap away. Over a gap of pier water they stood apart from the thane, oddly slow, gleaming, little lights wending their way beneath their feet. “Benwick would have never let you cross Thorolf without his introduction, now, would he?” Narcissus smiled, his friendliness insidiously creeping prickles up her back. “Benwick can hunt. . . For miles. . . Or could, shall we say?” Narcissus’s teeth gleamed as he unfolded his fingers towards Dahna and curled these back again. “You would not be here alone, mooning in each other’s company, had one such as Benwick pursued you. . . No doubt he tried to mate with you.”

“I killed him,” Dahna said, her voice strong, impassionate. “He was an infidel.”

“Yes,” Narcissus’s expression fell very serious, he nodding. “Yes, Benwick was quite full of himself. . . But he would have been a worthy lover to take and breed with.” His dark hooded eyes blinked slow, gaze shifting to the Morthwyl. “What brings a Morthwyl to Umay. . . Surely you must have been sent as her warden.” His expressive eye ridges narrowed together as a long conjoined pair of fingers and sharp nails wagged left and right. “You are probably charged with not to touch her. . .” His fingers clasped together beneath his waist robes. “Ordained and all. . .”

“What do you want?” Dahna demanded, pushing her hand back against the Morthwyl’s hatach. “Did you come here just to gloat over my father’s death and my brother’s permanent internment?” Her eyes narrowed, she tilting her head to the left. “Have you no decency?”

Narcissus held up his conjoined fingers to calm her words. “There is no need to be so defensive. A child would say less.”

The Morthwyl nudged her lower back with his wrist, tilting his face and red eyes to widen slightly at her, Dahna glancing stubbornly at his remindful expression to not be so childish.

:(He is baiting you.)

Narcissus’s eye ridges smooth lined. :(I like him.)

Dahna shot the thane a cool stare. :(You do not speak to him. He is mine.) She turned her shoulder, eyes slitting. :(I know what you are. . . You’re one of those ‘recruiters’. . . Don’t think that you can turn him from me. . . He is already claimed by the Kerhasla. . . You know so much about what goes on. . .)

“I do.” Again, he held his palm forward, ending the silent songs between them. “I am familiar with the Kerhasla.” His voice fell flat across the water. “I am aware they are trying to cross you with a powerful treasach in the far future. . . Perhaps not today,” he said, with a backward glance at the arrival of two groups of heavily armed burrell, these not wearing the standard, tidy uniforms of white and gold and red, but thicker, coarser crimson and leather armor. They even wore helmets that replicated the large flaps of the ancient mithra they still worshipped and prayed to. His face tilted downward some. “You are in grave danger, Dahna Kiross, and so is your friend if you choose this path with the Kerhasla. . . We will protect the Kratos heirdom from unfortunate crossing with Serepta breeds for the use in the Kerhasla’s plans. . .” His chin lifted. “You may choose to leave, but you will never come back to the crandal. . . Or you may choose to stay, and I will guide your tutelage. . . Personally.” His lips spread in a smile again.

“I don’t want your tutelage! The Kerhasla were right.” Dahna’s gaze was harsh. “You all want to have what my father held before you. I am not his progeny. I am no one’s vessel. I am Dahna of the Fire. And I will smote you if you try to take me against my will.” Her gaze flicked to the burrell forming either side in the espowyes behind the thane.

“Relax, Dahna. . . Dahna of the Fire. . . Beautiful sounding title.” His eyes slitted. “You will wonder what happens to your brother. . . Remember, _Dahna of the Fire,_ you are free to go, with your Morthwyl friend. . . We will be waiting for you when you’ve changed your mind.”

She sneered, pulling up her lip and spitting into the water, frightening away the small organisms that were complacently swirling and flitting beneath them.

“Keep your threats to yourself, thane. . . It is I, who control the power. . . Not you. . . The Suiaghan come, and will reign on this land. They will bring the war to end all war between the treasachs. . . Between _us_.”

He raised his hands and _clapped, clapped, clapped._ Blowing out his lips and hollowing his cheeks, Narcissus shook his chin side to side. “Spoken like a true diallo. . . But, Ilori-bred, we have the rook. A phrase that predates the rooker. . . Thanks to zhen intervention, we have a weapon to begin to raise in spite of the threat of Suiaghan. You will continue to prosper, my dear, thanks to your father. . . But inevitably, your intervention on behalf of the war to come will only be dismissed by a simple wave of my fingers. You are valuable, yes, but you are. . . Too. . .”

:(Foolish) The Morthwyl sighed, giving an _I-told-you-so_ glance to Dahna’s stare.

“Precisely,” Narcissus agreed. He raised his right conjoined finger vertically by his patak’s height, and bent these twice.

Two burrell came briskly forward from the left group and took up position to the right of Narcissus. He glanced at the burrell, then to Dahna.

“You may leave with them.” He gestured with a curve of body and arm. “These two will escort you to the crandal’s limits, and you may regain your dilean. . . The rooker remains since she is evidence of the foul play asserted against Bor Kratos’s bannon, Borachio. I think you will understand we cannot make amendments to the Govannon’s decision.” The smile came back, his fingers lacing together beneath his chin.

“You are afraid of me,” Dahna said to Narcissus, her face turning from the burrell.

“We do not make mistakes twice,” he replied.


	24. Chapter 24

A large, broad shouldered, thick-widthed figure stepped through the stone tunnel, a light as of day coming through behind him, keeping him black until he stepped through the opening into more light. His face was directed forward, but naturally turned up and to the left as his eyes and mouth widened. He wore a cream shirt, gathered at the thick waist, a collar about the neck with a hood flattened down behind his shoulders, its flap over his chest. There was a darker brown layer present on top of the shirt, and the pants matched the cream one, loose and wide, comfortable against his thick thighs. His hands held open, swinging to a stop as he stared upwards at the sight waiting for him, mouthing a silent oath as the whites of his eyes swung from left to right.

Feet dangled at uneven intervals in the space of the chamber before him, many still dressed in their pants and Hyrrokkin robes. There were young and there were old, their chins hanging straight down, or crests tilted to the sides, some with their hands and arms limp along the rights and lefts of their bodies, others with their finger or fingers stuck between the ropes around their neck and pinching off their tebris. All were dark for the most part, though a few were white with streaks of color. Piss and shit coated the floor beneath the bodies, dribbling out messily to join with other pools. Some were tainted with blood. All swung in the dusty, diagonal bars of light coming from a clerestory high above.

They had been tied and hung to wooden beams as thick and wide as two Drell arms lain side by side. How someone had reached the top of the high vault could only be guessed. And with so many ropes. . . There were sixty bodies in all, some higher up and looped in two ropes braided together.

“They must have been killed, then strung up,” one of the Kerhasi burrell, first to arrive and staring at the ceiling’s suspended dead while unraveling a rope from an anchoring hook, long and pointed on top and bottom ends attached to the smooth, brushed clay stone. “Could have been more than one who did the work, then helped,” he went on, hand over hand moving the rope upwards to lower the first of five bodies to the stinking, wet, dirt and filth covered floor of the Hyrrokkin Dior’s antechamber. Flags and incense pots were usually strung on long wires and thick tethers to hang at the entrance to the cult of barrin, Drell predisposed with lasting memory stores that could orate and remember, detail for detail, the accounts of those sent in for recording. A controversial, yet accurate, archive system of voice, hearing, and memory. Sometimes touch.

The senior Drell cast a piqued look to his right over the burrell’s heads, his cream and crimson face sneering with displeasure.

“Going to be a tough one, finding more barrin to replace these ones. . . Lots of memories lost,” the same burrell who led with his observations added, bending down to start untrussing the dead, catching a whiff of the stench, and making a face as he turned away.

“All but one,” said the senior Drell supervising the retrieval of dead by his burrell, gazing right still at the back of a very large Drell with white dress over his shoulders, a golden and crimson design of two suns with arms reaching downward dentils around these on the lay cloth over his back and arms. He turned from two young burrell and sought the senior Drell’s face easily, his gold flecked purple irises contracting as he walked heavily towards him.

“You see this, Narcissus?”

“Of course, I see it, Sere Claus,” Narcissus responded with a disdainful curve of his lips, his teeth practically flicking distaste of the senior barrin of the Hyrrokkin Dior. “It only reeks to the high Craig in here.”

Hercules Claus was an overweight Drell, a barrin blessed with the gifted sight. He was partially white on his jaw, with a yellow blaze along his patak and layered grey and black stripings running higher along his face to his crests. He nearly matched well his vestments for the Hyrrokkin. His thick crimson and grey, white, hand waved to the contents of the room as he looked at it. “This. . . This is a great attrocity. . . We need punish the infidel who. . . Who came here and destroyed my acolytes! It was Eufemiusz!” His gold, purple flecked eyes widened up at Narcissus as the barrin shifted his bulk from left foot to right, wagging a thick pair of sausage-sized conjoined fingers at him. “The beast has a. . . A son, who has been taken to Mercede.” The pointing fingers shook up at Narcissus. “We should go collect him and turn out his skull.”

“No, now, dear Hercules,” Narcissus shook his crests, solemn in his expression as he tilted his chin down, eyes closing, “that won’t be necessary. . . Sins of the father, if this is indeed the work of Eufemiusz ‘Dragomir’ Kiross. . . Should not be held in responsibility of the son. . . Besides, Eufemiusz Kiross hangs from the staff. . . Why would this be his busy work on such a _trying_ night as last?” Narcissus said, beseeching the barrin’s explanation with a pointed look as he indicated the dead with his hand, then folded these into his arm sleeves and withdrew his long face into the folds of his tebris, the smile affecting his lips to show teeth.

Hercules Claus looked down at the bodies of his barrins being lined head to toe on the floor, out of the way of piss. He looked over to more bodies having been lowered, loosened free, and being supported to the shifting clay dust by fresh burrell having arrived for assistance. The tunnel to the left of the antechamber from which the first visitor to the scene had discovered the hanging dead filled with the heavy, thick bulk of a much larger Drell, followed by two more on either side of him. The first in the lead swaggered through the light and stared down at the floor with the other two before following his eyes up, then snapping these, brown and gold, to the HighThane and Chief of Barrin. “What’s this I hear about Eufemiusz’s son,” the new Drell demanded, choosing to ignore the spectacle before him. His burrell, one black with red veining, the other royal blue with navy scalloping along his arms and crown, digging down into his face like icicles, sent their attention with his after glancing over the sight of strung and lowered bodies. “My daughter, Nelwyn, came to me the day before to tell of an ordeal with Kratos scum, Borachio, who I hear managed to slip and fall into his own knife,” he said, practically sneering. His brown, yellow, and orange limbs hung partly to the sides, blocking his burrell with the flex of rigid muscle. “I also hear the Seeton’s lost his son.”

“Pilar Sousan,” Hercules went to greet him, holding out both meaty paws in welcome of the richest Drell next to Bor Kratos. “Sered, it is good to see you. . . Would be were it a better day, that is,” he added correctively, motioning with a circular sweep of hand to the antechamber. “Do not fear—“

“I wasn’t,” Pilar snapped in a bold, brass voice, stretching his neck some to glower at the barrin master.

“Eufemiusz hangs this morning, I hear,” Hercules went on with a nod to Narcissus, who was slowly walking over and catching eye contact with the three Drell beside the barrin, “and his son is sent to Mercede for training.” He allowed himself a mirthful belly chuckle, looking smugly at Narcissus. “Now a Serepta, I presume. . .” He turned back to face Pilar, whose face had become tight and severe as he settled his head back over his wide shoulders.

“Serepta for saving my daughter’s life and her burrella,” Pilar spoke with dissatisfaction. His gaze turned to the High Thane. “Is it true? Eufemiusz hangs? We came through the seireadan entrance.” Narcissus gave a long nod. “Then we’re too late,” Pilar stated, eyes still on the High Thane. He tilted his crests left, beckoning from him a private moment. Narcissus glanced right, then strode the distance between them, Pilar separating from his burrell for a quiet word or two. Pilar’s burrell looked around, notsomuch to take in curiosity of the dead, but stock of the antechamber.

“We have a war ready with this swinging corpse of his,” Pilar said softly, walking with Narcissus and stepping over the bodies. “My ward says that Eufemiusz used his corpse as signal. . . Where is the daughter?” he suddenly asked, eyes scrutinizing the Drell next to him.

“I met her last night,” Narcissus said under his breath, keeping his face vacant and looking downward. “Tight as a wire, hot as her father. . . The son is far more sensitive. . . I fear he will make a poor excuse for a thane. . . Don’t tell Hercules what I have told you if he should ask. . . Not that he will, but. . . One can never be sure with him. . .”

Pilar’s face brought his gaze forward as they crossed into another tunnel. “Where did she go—“

“I don’t know,” Narcissus grated, “but she probably went somewhere Eufemiusz informed her of.”

“The Kerhasla?”

“No,” Narcissus said, closing his eyes in a deliberate blink. “Eufemiusz hated the sisterhood. . . Wouldn’t send her there. . .”

“Perhaps the north. There are refuges in the Mimi Cim Horn,” Pilar conjectured in a whispering tone.

“That would be prudent, but she has a Morthwyl.”

Pilar lowered his brown golden eye ridges. “You don’t say. . . What did he look like?”

“Black as night, no, darker. . . Tall. . . Red eyes and tebris like magma. . .” Narcissus opened his eyes wide. “They seemed very fond of each other. . .”

“And the drellahna,” Pilar asked, ignoring this bit of news as he glanced to his left, still walking into the deeper shade of the tunnel, “she look like Eufemiusz or the mother?”

“Albino,” Narcissus revealed with a hiss.

“Lela then. Has to be.”

“Yes.”

“So she’ll be easy to spot.”

“Not quite. . .” Narcissus stopped and turned towards Pilar, who stopped, too, and faced him. “She killed Benwick.”

“Benwick was—“

“ _Is_ dead. . . My other thane, too. And four more strangers were found on the roof tops. The drellahna and Morthwyl are trained.”

Pilar nodded, looking left then back at Narcissus. His hands gathered to his hips. “I don’t suppose you mentioned me to her.”

“She will have heard from the father, I have no doubt. Eufemiusz was making last minute visits in the night. . . Someone must have cut him down.” His face turned back to the antechamber.

Hercules Claus was speaking with more burrell, directing the clean-up. The two of Pilar watched and listened.

“I think he killed all of the acolytes because he did not want them laying with his daughter, who I’d wager puts up a decent fight, and to leave that wretched diallo back there for her to handle when the time is proper. . . I am rather surprised he is still alive.”

Pilar looked right into the antechamber at the Chief of Barrin. “Needs one to pass on the old memories. . . Should be busy for a few weeks delivering the accounts to sixty new barrin. . . If he can find that many.” They watched the ongoing clean-up and order for a time. “Do you think she will inspire the Borhala to rise?”

Narcissus continued to watch. “I have my doubts, but it is Cuillean she wants, so if he can be turned, then we will have leverage against her and thus whatever she brings.” His face turned to Pilar, who was only slightly shorter, but still tall for Drell. Narcissus’s eyes glanced down and up over the sered’s rich designs of clothing. “Did Nelwyn find her way home alright?”

“She did. . . And very angry that her burrella were hit so obscenely, embarrassed moreso they’d been caught by Bor’s sprat offguard while on delivery. . . It seems no generous allowance we make him can seem to slake his greed. . .” Pilar’s lips firmed as he faced the other. “I can’t send Nelwyn here without at least two guards in addition to her burrella. It’s frustrating. . . Can’t you do better than to let a damn bannon jump my child’s bodyguards?”

“We will do better next time, sered,” Narcissus dipped his chin, “though Eufemiusz’s arrival was timely. I do think Bor will relax his efforts to annihilate your progeny, now that he has a new thane to groom.” Pilar nodded, and glanced aside. With one more look at Narcissus, the two turned shoulders to each other’s and headed back towards the antechamber.

The High Thane stepped right, moving around the extended feet of lain dead and following the Sousan patriarch along the wall this time, their eyes surveying the faces of all those Eufemiusz had rounded up, culled, and strung as fowl. Pilar and Narcissus saw it as the sign that _Dragomir_ was giving to Claus: Betray him, send thanes after his daughter, and his shadow would reach from the grave to kill all those held dear. It wasn’t for the following that was Claus’s Hyrrokkin Dior that Eufemiusz had strung the lot, but for the destruction of litas, memories meant to hold the laws and trials witnessed and passed in by each special barrin, which were few and far between to find. Hercules did his best not to show it, but he was terrified and appalled that such a destruction of archiving had been masterminded. Sixty rare class barrin from among the treasachs. It was heartless, but the barrins were not sinless.

When Eufemiusz came upon the heavy brown doors reinforced with thick bars of wood in the night, and the sound of muffled voices inside, some pained, he sniffed the scent of drellahna and the pungence of whom he assumed was Hercules tasting the new females being raised from Ilori to Tyrannus tierra, and resumed his way passed the doors to a stone stairwell that led downwards to additional halls of the Craig.

Where he would find the Hyrrokkin Dior assembled in quiet mass under a glowing orb at the top center of another tall chamber.

With a rock no bigger than his palm, removed from a broken block of stone in the wall, he threw this at the orb, dispelling it, and as the only source of light keeping the Drell beholden, the chamber was sent into darkness, and quickly the doors shut behind him.

It took all of forty-five minutes for the thane to do his task, and beyond the walls, burrell stood quietly, pretending not to listen as the bodies were removed, one after the other.

 _You do not tempt the shade of death_ , one burrell had thought in the dismal silence that followed after the doors had reopened. _To tempt its gaze is to set Fate upon you and your unborn_. He gripped his spiro’s staff tighter, eyes wide in fear, listening to the dragging of bodies.


	25. Chapter 25

Dahna’s face was covered by her white hands. She was silent, stifling herself from crying any more. She sat on a log overlooking sparse sproutings of grass, patches of grey and cream silt with pebbles. Her back was hunched and she had only untied her halak, the back of which she sat on, the front overlapping the tail between her legs, knees open. Water could be heard idling by in front of her, just at the bottom of the bank she sat before. A kid dilean’s white, colorfully feathered head lowered down to peer sideways at her with its right eye, joined on Dahna’s left by its twin’s.

The Morthwyl, stark and black in nothing but his halak, was crouched six paces behind her, attending to a small ring of rocks in an open glade with trees among the perimeter reaching high to a partly cloud scudded sky. The weather was decent for after a night that had been so bitter for the drellahna. The Morthwyl arranged a few more sticks in a small pyre within the fire, then remained still as he perched his elbows on his knees.

 _My father_ , Dahna thought into her palms, _he wouldn’t have done this without reason. . . And now Cuillean’s taken away. . . What ought I to do?_ Her thoughts were whispers in her head, mulling over next steps to take. . . Where to go from here now that she was discovered by that thane and had been escorted from the crandal, banned from ever returning. Not that she had need to. _What did he say about Sousan. . . That they had been assisted by Cuillean. . ._ She lowered her hands to her knees, bringing these together to fold the halak between her thighs, and looked left, staring half into, half out of the shoreline where it met the water. _The time is come. . . I will sow my own seeds. ._ . “We will go to Nuru.”

The Morthwyl’s face was pointed at her, eyes red. His gaze traveled upwards.

She stepped over the rough barked log, cream tan halak gliding behind her, waist tebris light red on their catching surfaces reflecting the sun and dark crimson underneath. She had a majestic shimmer to the pearl oils on her scales and broader patches of firm skin, her face tilted downward, avoiding the Morthwyl’s loud stare. He did not have to say that he disapproved of her spoken thought. The dilean twins, Tille and Tihalt, bent their necks to follow her with their beaks. The furry, feathery bodies and haunches fluffed and shook with a vigorous shake as Dahna walked tentatively towards the Morthwyl and raised her eyes and jawline, stretching the blood red tebral folds of her throat.

Thoughts of senseless passion violated the Morthwyl’s vision and he quickly lowered his gaze to the fire, further left as he faced away from her, his red gaze narrowing. He fixated on a clump of reed sticking straight up from a tuft of dry grass.

Dahna waited patiently, and eventually placed the top of her wrist on her lower back as she shook her head at him. Then lowering her hand, walked to the left of the fire, causing the Morthwyl to look after her, abandoning the grass and reeds taking up his vision.

She walked ten paces and stopped, reaching across her body to pull a sprig of green, spiked, oily leaves from the trunk of a tree wrapped in thin ivy. She rolled the sprig in her fingers, and turned to look back at the Morthwyl, still crouched by the fire.

He looked down, back into the dirt, and absently pushed a stick at the flames, prodding it to release bright embers in staggered puffs.

“You know,” she held the sprig between her fingers, twirling it as her halak swept between her ankles, balls of feet pushing and lifting her heels, placing these down as she daintily padded towards the fire, “we could start the whole riot ourselves. . .” The Morthwyl did not look at her, though his right eyeridge twinged upward briefly. Dahna walked west around the fire stones. He looked up. She lowered her face to his and blew on his scales, the Morthwyl unable to resist smiling and giving her a sly look with the tilt of his eyes and lopsided greeting of his tightlipped grin. “Why won’t you talk to me?” she asked, having straightened, handing him the sprig which he plucked from her fingers between his conjoined pair and thumb. Gazing up at her, still with that sly look, his knee having lowered down near to the stones to support his weight, the halak twisted and laid out behind him to avoid the flames, he glanced down at the sprig then back to her as he answered.

:(I think you speak for both of us. You refuse to acknowledge my opinion. So I will wait and see how long it takes for you to realize I have a valid thought.)

“That’s not fair. . . I value very much what you say, little Morthwyl,” Dahna replied, her head forward her knees as she lowered down with her elbows laying across these in her crouch. She reached out and took the sprig from his offering fingers and held it between both her hands, crooking her head down to the right as she considered him with a coy, albeit mischievous, smile.

:(You wish to go to Nelwyn Sousan and demand her help.)

:(Yes.) She tapped the stiff leaves against her thumb and forefingers. The fire released a pop as one of the blisters on a waxy twig released. The Morthwyl did not flinch or look to it. Neither did Dahna. The head of the dilean, Tihalt, bumped her, forcing her gaze away from the Morthwyl’s as she smiled and dropped the sprig, suddenly having to reach and hold the fur and feathers to steady herself. The Morthwyl had caught the sprig and turned his face to his left, following over his shoulder as Tille lowered her beak and crest of raised feathering to ask for attention from him.

:(These two are hungry. . . Shall we go fishing?) he asked Dahna, glancing over at her serene profile, cooing and blowing at Tihalt’s feathery ridge of stiff fronds rising from above his head, her white fingers reaching through these to rub into the warm, blue tinged scalp.

“I think they want meat,” Dahna responded softly, cupping the dilean’s head under jaw with her left hand,spreading her palm and warmth over his beak with her right.

Covered in her yellow garb and cowl once again, Dahna stood still by the orange and silver wrinkled bark of a scaling tree, her face turned slightly eastward as she waited.

The forest on the border of Thorolf and Umay’s desert was open and orange on ground, yellow white sands as water in a permanent ebb against needles and grass intermingled. The trees were thinner here, their roots not as thick, and mostly underground. The ground itself was relatively even. Shade was abundant under the canopy before the dunes. As always, she could smell the sea salt from the great water five miles away.

Her red eyes flicked west, and shuttered closed briefly.

She kept tasting the air through long pulls of inhalation through her delicate nostrils. Lips set against each other, but relaxed in their pensive patience and thinking.

Lower down, barely peeping beneath the sleeve of her yellow robe, she had fashioned to her forearm, wrist, and hand, a bolt gun made of some black metal covered in yellow leather along both top and bottom braces to protect her skin and a flat disc set with coiled wire. A sharp point with dovetail prongs swooped either side of the bolt was hidden in line with medial bone of her conjoined fingertips, and her thumb was gently crooked against a small clip of metal shaped as a paddle stone in her palm. On her left arm was a vambrace, which she used to add support to the bolt gun when firing. This also acted as a _chalaise_ , a small shield to protect her face from returned fire in the event she was meeting another like-armed opponent. One had to be quick to use it effectively, and it had saved her crests from being scarred and cut more than once in her training with the tools against competent opponents trained in the art form. The underside of the chalaise was dark on her opposite arm, all that could be seen beneath the robe.

While she waited, she blinked and looked east again.

She began to hum, trilling a silent melody from her tebris that her mother taught her and sang to soothe before naps as a child. She wasn’t preparing to sleep herself, but the vibration might attract the attention of some prey curious enough to investigate the current of language produced forth by her tebral organ.

The moment a deerlike creature brought its tan-yellow head into view, white front up the chest and southerly curving neck, ears short, brown, and low beneath sprouts of bone from the temporal scalp lobes of promoted flesh, Dahna’s arm punched a bolt through the poor creature’s head, exiting clean through the back, the piercer extending four hooks to clamp to the fur and flesh before the kill could drop to the tree needles on the ground. Dahna rotated her forearm with the bolt runner to point vertical, using her left hand to detach the wire that had been connected to the bolt. The wire lay loose on the ground.

Dahna uttered a quiet curse as she tried to figure out what had happened to the coiling mechanism.

And someone stepped in to claim her kill.

Seeing it, not quite believing the stranger’s audacity, Dahna reloaded the bolt gun and bent her head and cowl right, aiming down the view of the bolt’s fang with one red eye narrowed. “Hold on a second. That’s mine.”

The smooth patak, mustard yellow with flashes of black along his low-lying crests and upper scalp, looked up at her with bright whites and copper gold eyes beneath animated eyeridges.

Dahna raised her cheek tebris slightly, regarding her new target.

He had an engaging smile, and looked every bit the rogue. “I’m just loosening up the bolt for you, dearheart.”

Her lips parted, unsure whether he was trying to be genuine or if he was about to deceive her. She had not lowered her bolt yet, keen that he was a scofflaw come to steal her kill after hours of patience.

He was cutting the four hooks out from their grip on the ridgehorn’s skull, then proceeded to thread the long wire ending at her boots through the brain and skull matter, glistening with red blood and darker flecks.

He glanced up at her again, bent in a crouch over the body as he used both his sure hands, one over the other, to pinch the wet wiring and floss it towards him. “Pretty vixen like you shouldn’t be hunting alone, singing lullabies to herself and prey. . . Makes us grown man-Drell self-conscious about our hunting abilities. . . Maybe you could teach us a trick or two.”

Dahna blinked, aware of his charm and remaining suspicious of his intentions behind her calm visage. She still did not lower the bolt gun, only adding the chalaise horizontally beneath her right wrist to support the weight and keep her shoulder from tiring. The bolt gun, loaded with coil and shard, was at least eight pounds.

His eyes stayed on her face, and his expression was a little less happy by the new gesture.

“You’re either foolish, or far too confident for my liking,” Dahna spoke, her voice strong and undaunted.

A black body and brown halak dropped from four trees away and strode swiftly to stand by Dahna’s right arm.

:(Borhala.)

Dahna gave a slight bob of her chin at the Morthwyl’s proclamation.

The strange Drell stopped and rested his left arm on his knee, brown and yellow fingertips slick with red blood. He fanned his fingers out, a dip to his head as he looked up bright and smiling yet again. “I do have a name, if you care to ask.” He shrugged his leather padded shoulder, the strap crossing tightly his chest. Dahna sought for other weapons on him besides the hunter’s knife in his right hand, the knuckles of which were garbed in a dark brown butching glove and resting against the ridgehorn’s furry yellow, white, and brown rump. The Drell had a brush stroke of brown parting his lower lip and underlining the curves of flesh.

“I don’t,” Dahna replied, still looking at him from behind her bolt, “but I suggest you back away from my kill before the twins arrive to enjoy their meat.”

Two white bodies were weaving their bobbing heads among the tree trunks not twenty meters away and closing fast, drawn to the smell of blood and their owners. The Drell wisely rose from the ridgehorn and took a generous number of hasty paces in reverse as the dileans, Tille and Tihalt, picked up speed towards their freshly slaughtered meal.

The Drell stepped right, moving his blade to his left hand and wiping the stains on his hunter’s knife against the leather of his butching glove, cool to the fact Dahna was following him with her aim. The Drell watched the two beautifully colored dileans tear at the carcass, freed of the bolt and wire thanks to his courteousness. Tille raised her neck and clacked threateningly at the Drell before returning to tear with talons and hooked beak. “There you go, eat up,” the Drell said, amused, to the twins as they indulged in their fare. He began to remove his glove with strong tugs of his left fingers, rubbing the blood off onto the rougher leather, holding the blade clear of him as he did this, and only then did he start to raise his face up to Dahna and her Morthwyl. The smile affected his patak again. “Dilan.”

Dahna and the Morthwyl continued to stare at him, the Morthwyl’s red eyes slanted in suspicion, but it was Dahna who lifted her crests upright, relaxing some of her guard. “Where are you from? Are you part of the Borhala, like he said?” She glanced at her counterpart, whose hands were ready by his thighs.

“Borhala-who?” The Drell, self-named Dilan, twinged his eyelids some. He placed his left knuckles against his hip, under a thin brown flap of cape with a hood, knife jutting out carelessly, or not. He stood with his right foot forward to them.

The dileans ate hungrily, ignoring the three Drell. Dilan looked to the east, lifting his chin some in that direction. “Arrived just short a day ago. Been trying to find some food around here.” He returned his convivial expression to them. “Figured I’d make a good impression on you and be invited for a meal rather than attempt to steal it from an expert mark-drellahna.” His grin lifted higher against his patak. He nudged his elbow at the dileans. “Might’ve asked them if I’d known whom it was meant for.”

A little grin betrayed Dahna’s lips at his joke, but faded just as quickly.

“Are you from the seireadan?” she suddenly asked him. “From across the abyss?”

His eyes looked left and right at them, raising his right hand to his other hip as he shifted his weight to step the right leg back a foot. The expression on his face possessed a calm and persistent smile, if somewhat more conservative. “Maybe. . . Depends who’s asking.”

Dahna turned her head to the Morthwyl, who still did not take his eyes off Dilan. She gazed first with clear pink pupils, then her face somewhat turned back towards the Drell with her crests leaning towards the Morthwyl. A wry smile blessed her lips.

Dilan’s full blaze of smile returned.


	26. Chapter 26

Stepping down from a grey rock, Dahna’s bare feet spread in sand as holding her boots over her left shoulder, she gazed to the shoreline at the mouth of the Tina River and Bay of Bisgu. In her eyes may have been the thoughts of her brother, gone across the sea, alone and without her knowing what would become of him. And a sweeping melancholic rush went through her at the thought of her father having done what he had. She was unique, standing there, lowering one foot down to join the other, her yellow cowl pushed at gently by the breeze from the shoreline. The Morthwyl, always present, stepped up over the same grey rock and down, gazing east with her as to their right the dilean twins came up with their new companion, Dilan, walking lean and saunteringly in between Tille and Tihalt. He stopped as the dileans did, obediently waiting for the Morthwyl and Dahna to resume their walk. Dilan’s mouth parted some as he raised his chin to look over to see what they were gazing at. He set his hands on his hips above a wide leather belt, holding between his grey brown pants’ waist the ends of his green tunic, cut down in the middle to reveal part of his yellow and brown chest with a loose stitch of string hanging mostly out of one side of the eyelets. His cloak covered his upper arms.

“What’s that? You never seen a suns-set before? Better if you look to the actual suns on the horizon, were it not for that land in the way.”

He was right, of course. The only view they had was of the sky affected northward of the Tina-Bisgu estuary, a finger’s width of land from their distance. It blocked the suns’ set they would have seen. The clouds were gathered on the horizon, lined lighter, bluer, and darker before the greeting of sky and ocean. Above most and south on the clouds’ edges was a rosy pink hue with more purple up top. The air was going from warm to cool, and soon, Dahna and the Morthwyl knew, the woods would be hunting ground for the darkness’s wuliton.

Dahna’s crests picked up blueness and grey. She turned her face as the Morthwyl had stepped to her left and her jewel eyes went to the Drell between Tihalt and Tille.

His eyes blinked and lowered from the sea view to her, and his teeth bared in a friendly smile.

Dahna huffed, rolling her eyes as she shook her crests and advanced, the Morthwyl glancing at her cloak and then over to Dilan. Expressionless, the Morthwyl walked to join her.

Dilan started walking just after Tille, followed by Tihalt, went forward in motion, furry shoulders rotating in easy rise and fall over the more rocky terrain they were encountering closer to the estuary.

Their shoulders, clothes, heads and crests were silhouettes against the sky. This would have been the view from one seated inside the tunnel entrance. One head on the left, sleeker than the one on the far right, not as sleek as the one in the middle, bent down and up. “I’m not going in there.” The opposite pair turned their heads, profiles of noses and necks defining against the cottony, streaky, purple, blue, and hazy pinks and oranges above them in the sky.

“Suit yourself, Dilan.” The head on the right turned back to facing the mouth and proceeded to step up onto the rock, turn, and descend backwards into it, waving dark fabric obscuring the sky.

“Is this where she lives?” Dilan asked, staring left of him at the Morthwyl, the view of water a sandy cliff behind him, Tille walking over on his right.

The Morthwyl stared back at him, shrugged, and wordlessly lifted his legs, bracing on his sleekly muscled arms, and inserted his lower limbs boots first, the rest of his black figure and red eyes following with less than a scuff of pebbles. Dilan leaned forward, in view of the forest where it was much thicker than at the dunes, and dark and lonesome. He peered down into the mouth of the cave, his nose slightly raised. “I can understand one such as him might be comfortable with it, but this is no place for a Drell or drellahna,” Dilan said aloud to the dileans. Tihalt extended his beak towards him on a long white neck. “Right.” Dilan bobbed his chin,made to go in forward as the Morthwyl had, hesitated, turned around and lowered himself by hand backwards. “Steady, easy does it.” He was descending with the help of his grip on the black rocky ledge when Tihalt tapped his wrist with the sharp claw of his beak.

“Ow!” Dilan had landed on an uneven row of smooth gleaming rocks, a fire’s light already glowing off the surfaces and warming Dilan’s clothes and figure. He was nursing his right hand where Tihalt had pecked him, staring up out the mouth of the cave in case a head were to follow after, but seeing none, he turned his face towards the fire glow and carried his hand, stepping down from each stone.

The floor was not flat, nor even, as it was agape with more of the smooth, glistening black rocks, he discovered. There was matting: reeds, blankets, dilean fur and moltings in one big cluster on the left of the cavern, in view of the fire in the middle, which had a skin over it leading up to the tunnel mouth, a shallow channel for the smoke to follow out. This was tinged with soot from previous fires. Another cluster of blankets, pillows, feathers, fur, and reeds was set to the right of the fire, closer to perhaps manage it while one sought moments of sleep or rest. Dahna was seated on this one, her cowl hanging loose over her back, the yellow sleeves pulled over her shoulders but parted in the middle to expose the slim physique under it.

And the hatach folded over the halak of cream. Her legs were crossed as she pulled off her soft leather boots, one after the other, and set these to the left of the matting. Her face was shadowed, but the fire glowed bright on her right. The Morthwyl sat beside her, prodding at the fire in a small pit of black, oval rocks arranged to house and contain the wood and kindling. He moved small branches into place with a loose arm of wood, then reached into the fire to pick up something that he did not like of its placement. He made no sound as he reached into the heat of the flames and pulled out a loose, burning splinter as big as his hands, relocating this to the border in front of them where it glowed red and hot.

Dilan’s expression held nothing to be read, though his eyes were wide, and he was impressed.

He balanced his soles and toes down on the gentle slope of smooth, round rocks nestling them in, and found a comfortable enough rock among these to sit down on and nest his elbows upon wide flares of knees, hands connecting in front of him, as he turned his face to the right where Dahna sat on the matting, about to massage her shins, but pausing to look up at him with an etched concern to the scales above her eyes. Dilan made to move, thinking he had infringed on her personal space by the fire, and was leaning forward to rearrange himself to a farther stone when she pointed her right conjoined pair at his right hand, which in the motion, had swung towards the fire and revealed the gash from Tihalt’s beak. The Morthwyl glanced across at it, too. Dilan paused, mid-move, and turned his head downward to look at the cut, rotating the back of his hand to catch the light on his smooth scales. “Oh,” he said, staring at it, then lifting his gaze to move over towards hers and the Morthwyl, “he likes me, I think.” He offered his hands towards the mouth of the tunnel, directing them to realize it had been Tihalt’s doing. The Morthwyl went back to tending the sticks and stones in the fire. Dahna’s face turned from the tunnel mouth to Dilan.

“You’ll need to clean it.” Dahna’s voice was soft as she looked up at him, her gaze lowering as he returned to being seated on the first stone he’d selected. “The male dileans have a bite. It can get infected if not treated. . . Saliva,” she said, pointing to her mouth. After a second or two, she rose from the matting and held her arms slightly bent, out to the sides of her waist as she balanced her way around him to the only other matting in the cave. It took some time to maneuver over the smooth rocks, but she went three stones passed the second rest area, reached her arm out of view two rocks ahead of her, and from a wedge between the stones, she withdrew a small vase with a clay, painted lid. She held this to her, stood, and made her balancing act back towards the fire, the Morthwyl, and Dylan. She reclaimed her seat on the left side of the matting, set the vase in her lap, and removed the cover to set down on the curve of her right knee beneath her cloak. Her white hand, now orange and yellow in the Morthwyl’s fire’s glow, disappeared inside the vase, which was banded brown, grey, blue and a darker blue at the bottom. Dilan watched, his rump on the warming stone, knees apart, right elbow resting on his same knee. Dahna paused, the Morthwyl glancing over at her before back to the fire, and she looked at Dilan, an expectation in her face. He unbent his right elbow, extending the hand to her, palm down, and Dahna removed hers from the vase and smeared something thick and heavy, cloyish even, onto the hand.

“What is that?” Dilan furrowed his eyeridges, his mouth curling back in an amused grin.

Dahna pressed the clay into the back of his hand, smoothing it over the long skin with brusque strokes of her forefingers and some thumb, _a bit hastily_ , Dilan thought. “It’s a salve my mother learned. . . And taught me,” she added, tone dropping a notch. The Morthwyl glanced over at her again, before turning away to the fire, again. He could hear the welling in the back of her throat.

:(You have not finished grieving yet.) he reminded her.

Dahna’s pearl and fire reflecting scales between her eyeridges bent in concentration, ignoring him as she pressed the salve into the gash in Dilan’s hand.

Dilan winced at her sudden pressure into the gap.

He watched as she mixed the grey salve with his blood, not minding that it was coating her fingers. The heat from the fire, the sting in the back of his hand, and her vigorous rubbing was tantalizing all in combination.

His eyes studied her face, focused dutifully on her task. _Something pains her. . . A moment ago she could barely stand to touch me. Now she’s trying to distract herself. . . She is pretty. . ._ His gaze lifted to the Morthwyl, who to his surprise was staring back at Dilan. And in none too friendly a way, Dilan decided.

Dilan cleared his throat and tilted his eyes’ ridges diagonally down to the drellahna. His smile was sympathetic and not at all implying of any other interest besides, _You can stop now. Thank you._ “I think that works for me.” His teeth reflected the firelight as he smiled a little broader, taking his hand back from Dahna. Bending his eyeridges into mature sternness, he looked at the fire and puffed his tebris. “I think I hear some sobbing in that throat of yours. You need to go grieve as your boyfriend said,” he huffed out deeply, and with some authority on the subject.

Dahna’s jewel eyes were small stars between her pale eyelids, her face lowered to the vase as she replaced the cover beneath her chin. “I’ll just put this away first. Then go to the water and clean my hands.”

Soundlessly, she stood, pushing her feet down against firm stones beneath the matting, and rose from her cross legged position to stand and go around Dilan again.

He looked straight ahead at the fire as she passed behind him, cloak silent in its quickening rush, and the sound of the vase being slid into its wedgehold a moment later was heard. Dahna’s yellow cloak went fluttering behind him as she bolted up to the mouth, fading to black and blotting out the little of sky glow desending into the cave beyond Dilan. His eyes left the fire then, looking at the Morthwyl.

His current, silent companion was sitting cross-legged, halak loosely folded between his legs as he stared into the fire, unblinking. He rest both wrists on either knee, spine erect but hunched at the shoulders. Taking a deep breath, he straightened his torso fully, turned, and looked at Dilan.

“She lose someone recently?” Dilan raised his left conjoined fingers, a gesture meant for Dahna up top.

The Morthwyl made no answer for ten long seconds, then exhaled through his black nostrils in an elegant manner as he turned towards the fire.

:(She is grieving the loss of her family. . . Her father was Dragomir of the Isles. . . He hangs this day from the staff of the Craig. . . And her brother was stolen, sent to Mercede for punishment. . . As Serepta tierra. . .) The Morthwyl paused, breathed in again, black gleaming chest rising. He nearly matched the stones surrounding them.

He exhaled as Dilan spoke: “Dragomir of the Isles. . . What type of name is that? Does he live in shadow?” His patak creased on the left side of his face.

:(He was a shade. . . Darker than I and just as invisible though his skin was jewel emerald and colors of rainbow. . . He was a mammoth of a Drell. . . And a king who would not be. . .) The Morthwyl stared into the fire, his grey lids and black lids closing. The heat was well throughout the cavern, ensconcing them in its womb.

Dilan’s eyes widened as he held his knees, sitting tall as the Morthwyl. “You don’t say!” He almost turned to look out the mouth of the entrance, thought better of it. “She happen to have any benefits from that impressive parentage?” he said in a lowered voice, jumping his eye ridges and nodding his crests instead.

The Morthwyl grinned and leaned over his right knee towards Dilan.

:(She has me.)

Dilan’s face fell, his jaw loosening as he tried to figure that out. He narrowed his left eye in regard of the Morthwyl. “Does that mean you’re her third cousin or something?” he asked low and cautiously.

The Morthwylstared at him, leaning back to upright with his palms on his knees, red eyes growing large before snapping the four pairs of eyelids and glaring at Dilan.

:(No! It means I am her steward. I take care of her now. She is as much my ward as I am her guardian.) His gaze moved to the opening of the cave behind Dilan. :(And we are in love.)

Dilan pushed his lips over to the left side of his face, eyeing the Morthwyl with a languid stare. “Yes. . . Obviously. . .” _Delusional, I might add._ He relaxed his expression, blowing out his lips and fluttering the tallest flames with his expelled breath. “I’m. . . Going to go up top for some air.” He rolled his right wrist forward, exposing salve plastered across his hand. “Getting a little _woozy_ in here from the, uh, stuff she put on.” His spun his left digits in a circle above the hand, wiggling his head a little before pushing off his bottom.

The Morthwyl stared at him leaving, looked at the fire in need of tending still so that it lasted throughout the night while they slept, and narrowed his red glowing eyes in a Morthwyl’s scowl at the flames.

Glancing behind him at the Morthwyl seated dutifully by the fire, Dilan reached his hands up to the mouth of the cave’s rock ledges, withdrew his hands suddenly, fearful of another stab by the dilean, and craning his head side to side to look for any wayward beaks, proceeded to reach again and grasp the rock lip. He moved his head and shoulders forward, stepping up on the firm supports underfoot.

His head breached the aboveground air and he continued to look right and left. The forest was darker, taller it seemed, and alive with music from insects, but distant to their right. On his left, the sky was without its pastel hues, cool lavender with a cooler breeze. Clouds flat on their bottoms and rolling on top could be seen calmly moving over the waves, and Dahna’s green tinted yellow cloak was drawn up around her crests, so that all could be seen of her was the fact she sitting on the bluff of sand and pebble, her cowl, and softly shaking shoulders beneath her cloak. The cowl suddenly shifted forward, and a wet sniff was heard.

Dilan hesitated, his hands cupping the entrance ledge, his neck and shoulders just rising above. He watched her for a little, glanced back down into the cave, and with a small bounce, heaved himself out to mid-hip and perched his left boot onto the edge. He half knelt, and from there stood, pulling his right leg out with him. His cape trailed behind him as he stepped down from the smooth lip, moving left towards the bluff and the stooped yellow-green figure sitting twelve paces from two dilean kids that had tucked their forelimbs and backlimbs beneath themselves in a dirt bed they had scratched out of the bluff with their long black claws. Stopping three steps behind her, he pulled up his hood, which the breeze quickly played with, to ward off the cold. “Nice night.” The seated cowl sat up some, but didn’t turn. Dilan placed a hand against his waist, the other against his side, elbow pushing the cape out some before the wind played this, too, revealing his figure beneath. He faced the ocean.

His eyes were on the back of her cowel. Dahna’s gaze was before her, looking down. Dilan shifted his weight some and opened his mouth, closed it partly, glancing right, then back to her cowl as he opened his mouth again, trying a second thought. “My mother. . . She departed the. . . “ His voice trailed off. He rubbed his left hand over his crest and scalp, looking down right and hanging his mouth open as he sought for a different share to comfort her by. He shook his head, dropping his hand then swishing both out and away from his hips. “You suffer. I’m sorry. I don’t know you, but you’re a very pretty drellahna and I hate to see pretty drellahna suffer so. . . Reminds me of my wife. . .” He grinned, a thin one, at the back of her cowl. Dahna made a small motion with her head turning an inch toward her shoulder, but straightened ahead to resume staring at the ground. “My wife,” Dilan went on, holding his elbows over his baggy sleeves, “she died. . . Kris. . . But she always used to cry when she was mad at me. . . Broke my heart,” he said, shaking his head slow and looking off to sea. He looked down, then up again. “Never could seem to keep her happy. Not with my line of work.” His gaze went back to Dahna’s cowl. “She was young. . . Like you.” He glanced down, as if this deserved a moment of modesty. Dahna continued to stare on. Dilan raised his face back to the ocean. “She didn’t like—“

Dahna’s lips moved. “What did you do that made her cry so much?” She still didn’t look at him. His gaze fastened to her, and the grin came on him again as he held his arms close to himself in a hug.

“I was away a lot. . . Had to be. . . I was—“

“A merchant?” She had turned and was looking up at him through the side of her cowl. Dilan dropped his bearhug of himself, glanced at the treatment on his right hand, and strode calmly towards her. He stopped beside her on the bluff and sat down, bending his knees, straightening one over the edge, then letting the other add to it and hang. He put his left hand down between them, and bending his right knee back up, crooked his elbow over it and glanced at her, then out to sea. Dahna watched him for a moment through the cowl fold, then turned her head to face the same direction. “My mother died of the Kris. . . She went to help others and was infected.”

“Yes,” Dilan said, nodding once, “yes, that seems to be how it was for my wife. . . My little Petenka. . .” His eyes slid over to look at her profile revealed before the cowl. “Your friend, back in the tunnel there,” he tipped his crest back, still watching her, “seems to have a story about you. . . Something to do with shadows of death and family. . .”

Dahna’s chin lifted to the ocean. “My father was Eufemiusz Kiross. He died today. . . Well. . . Yesterday soon. . .” Her eyes lifted to the sky briefly. “He was. . . Fighting for our sovereignty from Kerhasi rule. . . It ended before he could be. . . Completely free—what am I saying,” she closed her eyelids, shook her head back into the cowl. Dilan tilted his crests to the right, straightening out his knee to let it join the other hanging over the bluff, and he set his right hand down behind him, taking a cautionary glance at the dilean still in their burrowed nest. His gaze returned to her cowl as he waited for her to go on.

She looked over at him, nose and lips seen by the edge of the cowl. “Do you ever wish you could go back to her? Your wife? Tell her you knew everything she never told you? Wished you hadn’t gone behind her back to find out?”

“I believe that’s called regret,” he said, and leaned forward, putting his elbows on his thighs, fingers lacing together. “And, no, I don’t indulge in that. . . Sounds like you do. . .”

Dahna fell quiet. Dilan continued to stare at her. Their silhouettes grew darker as the night began to prick with stars. Dahna looked down, then out to sea. “My father didn’t know that I’m to replace him.”

“Does that mean you’ll be a queen?” Dilan asked, tilting his crests right.

Dahna’s figure didn’t move, but she replied: “I am to be death. . . Death to a line of kings. It is written in the tierra that we are to be free. . . Free Drell.”

“That sounds. . . Marvelous,” said Dilan, and Dahna gazed over at him, turning her head.

They rose from their seats after a while, the sky over ocean dark blue and purple. Dahna made a right and went to visit Tille and Tihalt, extending her arms to collect their heads one at a time, then altogether, as she rubbed her face in their feathers, and may have whispered something of their missing mother, Kalare. Dilan’s silhouette waited for hers away from the dilean, his hands at his waist, in pockets.

Dahna came through the mouth of the tunnel first, looking up as she posted against black stones on her way down, her white face reflecting fire and gaze searching for the Morthwyl. Dilan’s long legs made their way down next as Dahna balanced forward over the rocks. He cautiously lowered his head, and brought his hands in quick, having learned his lesson from the last time, though Tihalt might have been far enough away not to be tempted. His gaze sought the stones, and then lifted towards the firelight, where Dahna had gone.

Her cloak billowed out and fell as she went straight for the Morthwyl and crouched down in front of him, his red eyes glowing downward into her face as he came into view. His smile was hard to see due to his nightness, but he raised one arm around her as she sat and drew her cloak about her chest and neck, nestling against him. His red eyed gaze lifted to Dilan as Dahna’s torso rose and fell with a deep sigh, she closing her eyes in peace, the cowl falling back from her crests upon his arm.

:(Thank you.)

Dilan smiled, a softened curve, and nodded. “Don’t mention it.”

He balance-walked over the stones, passing to the cave fire’s left, looking at the Morthwyl as he pointed to the vacant bed of matting and himself. Receiving the Morthwyl’s nod, Dilan made for the makeshift bed and turned his hips down into it, lowering and feeling out the stones versus the padding with his hands and body. It was substantial enough, and he lay on his left side, finding a snug fit among a channel of stones underneath, which was still quite comfortable. He was surprised.

Laying his hood and crest on his left arm, right hand with salve along his side, he kept his eyes open a moment, watching the pair across the fire.

The Morthwyl relaxed, remaining seated, his eyes closed completely, and Dahna had laid down to the left of him, behind him partly, pale face and most of the upper yellow cloak doused in the shadow of the Morthwyl’s tall, seated form. His larger shadow flickered against the knobby black stones extruding from the wall of the cave beyond the pair. The fire snapped and spit sparks diagonally upwards and towards the cave entrance, but the Morthwyl only flickered his eyelids, took a breath, and remained still.

Dilan closed his eyes, and tugged down his hood with his fingers.

The three fell asleep in the warmth of the cave, firelight touching all of them and the gleaming stones.


	27. Dilan

Chopping down, Dahna’s skin of her top half was borne to the suns. Her tan cream halak rolls taut about her waist, revealing her navel and the smooth plats of broad scale up the middle of her torso. She held the small axe tightly as she swung down.

The sound of wood splitting, an axe simultaneously biting into a stump, repeated throughout the morning. The dileans were up, clipping the sparse cover of greenery sprouting in the vicinity of the mound of black rocks raised at the mouth of the cave. They were twenty paces away from Dahna, fur soft and shivering now and then as they placed their black claws forward. The tree line was orange along bark, and brown, the canopy greener and more welcoming in the daylight.

Dilan started from his sleep, copper eyes wide, and blinked about in the dark cave lit only by the day coming through its mouth. He was cold, alone, and winced, issuing a small grunt through his nose as he carefully eased himself off the matting and underlying rocks.

He had slept well as could be with a lumpy bed and passed off fantasies of the white drellahna he had comforted the last evening.

Shifting up on his left elbow, he opened his eyes, lifted his chin, and squinted down the tunnel.

Stones faintly lit by the day from the tunnel entrance, leading away into blackness, and then a pair of red eyes opened. Big ones.

With his blood frozen, Dilan pushed himself backwards, jumping his boots under him and backpedaling in a clumsy balancing act as he hastily made away from the tunnel’s inhabitant with hands out.

He pulled out his knife and a gun. The cape on his back covered his right shoulder, falling over his right arm in which the gloved hand held the black weapon. He had put his butching glove on to keep from smearing the salve Dahna had dressed his injury with over his clothes. His left hand held the hunter’s knife, blade outward, tip pointed to the right cave wall. He backed away until he could feel the rocks begin to slope upward to the entrance hole with his boots. The daylight shown down on him in a soft silver over his hood, caped shoulders, left sleeve, hand, and gun. “Hey!” He called upward, sparing a quick stretch of his neck above and over his left shoulder, eyes still fixed down the tunnel. “Hey! There’s something down here! A hand please?!” Dahna’s upper and farther voice carried to his hearing.

“Don’t worry. . . They’re just beren. . . They guard the tunnels during the daytime. . . Come up and don’t kill him if you seen one. . . They’ll only attack if threatened—and you’re not what they worry about.”

Dilan’s mouth was open, the roof of his hood having fallen over his eyes. He slipped a little, trying to get his footing, and reached up to the mouth of the tunnel with his knife hand, stowing the gun behind him in a hold somewhere under the cover of his cape as he continued to watch the tunnel. He called out, “Don’t let that dilean come taste my hand again! I’m coming out!” Staring ahead, he removed his right arm from his cape and reached up as a white, long arm reached down and gripped the width of his bicep. Dilan’s face looked up, daylight filling his eyes and pooling over his very concerned expression as his hood fell back.

Dahna’s white face smiled down at him, the red eyes and glossy, subtly pearl-pink-tinged scales showing no alarm, but mirth.

“Put the knife away,” she chastised, looking down at his brightened face with yellows and browns, some orange striping evident.

“You swear it won’t eat me,” he demanded her word, as if she had control over the beren, looking down and ahead of him at the tunnel she could not see, revealing his boa brown bands along his scalp and the low spades of dark brown spines along the middle of his head, trailing behind his neck.

“As I’ve said, beren have no taste for Drell.” She tightened her grip on his arm and pulled.

Dilan’s eyes widened as he raised off the stones of the cave a few inches before turning his face upward and helping by bending his elbows and pulling up through his grip and back.

Dahna’s boots stepped backward and down as Dilan came through the mouth of the tunnel, changing his left hand’s position to push down on the hilt of his knife against the rock as he raised the same side boot over the lip and pulled simultaneously upward with his right hand assisted by her strong grip.

Her other arm moved to the outside of his right, supporting him as she guided herself back.

Dilan’s right footing slipped on the curved edge of black rock and he came forward and down onto Dahna. “Whoops!”

Dahna’s boots arranged themselves backwards quickly as she removed her right hand from his arm to post firm against his left shoulder, pinning Dilan upwards beneath the strength of her lean body. Her face, pointed downward to see his boots find a stable footing, turned skyward to see Dilan with his hands spread apart, bent out at the elbows, in the recent flail. He lowered his right glove and his left bare hand, their skin coming into contact at her right elbow, rough leather of the glove cupping her left. “I’m steady,” he said, certain, lowering his face in an assuring nod. Her left fist controlled a bundle of his cape and sleeve about the shoulder. She released it carefully and lowered her hand once Dilan stepped down from the ledge of rock he was on. She turned to her right as he grinned and followed her with a turn of his face, she patting his left shoulder with her left hand. “Sorry,” she said, completely disconnected and moving away to their left.

“You’re very strong,” Dilan said, staring after her and bending to pick up the knife he'd dropped in his stumble.

Her exposed torso moved as a willow away from him, linear and geometrically sewn details of her cream and tan halak revealed as fabric slipped between her long and muscular white legs. She pulled brown gloves on, having removed these from being stuffed between her waist and halak. Dilan stared at her from behind, his front partly towards the ocean view over the northern bluff. Layered, red folds of tebris lay flat along her sides as she returned to her stump, bent, and came up with the axe. She held the end handle in her left gloved grip, the upper neck of it in her right gloved palm, fingers closing as she looked down to her right and left in thought at the pile of wood she had cut and what still waited to be done.

The water flowing into the gaps around the estuary could be seen beyond Dilan’s still figure.

He watched her back arch as she raised the small axe high, just behind her crests, and arced down with a thick _tock_ of wood splitting either side of the small axehead. Her hands, having joined together at the end during the swing, parted as she bent and picked up the block on the left and set it on its end, followed by the block on the right. “You know how to chop wood?” Dilan asked her. He started to walk over, checking the ground for his footing. Dahna took a half step back, halak swaying over the tops of her boots’ feet, hanging the small axe in her right hand along her bare right leg seen through the halak’s side part. She looked behind, over her shoulder at him coming forward. She set her left hand on the top of her halak.

“I learned by watching my father,” she said, raising the axe head out and twisting the handle so the blade reflected a bright shine of light on its mirror quality surface. Dilan sauntered over beside her left, holding out his open palm to suggest she let him try it. She held it out for him, not withdrawing it, and standing, turning towards her, Dilan gripped the handle in the middle, dwarfing it in his hand. His posterior crests pointed up to the sky as he held the axe, considering its weight, feel, blade, and make. His face turned up to hers.

“You handmade this.”

She nodded, looking from him to the tool. “My father did.”

“Excellent work. It doesn’t even shake with the blade. Wood’s solid. No splits, no splinters. . .” He had lowered his study to the axe in his hands, then up again to her face which was focused on it as well. Her gaze moved to his in curiosity.

“What,” she said, suddenly smiling. He grinned at her, shifting his bodyweight back on his right hip. He held the axe straight up then, balanced on his left conjoined fingers, wobbling it a little side to side before popping it off his fingertips with a flick of the pair. Dahna caught the axe’s shaft vertical with her left hand leaving her hip to cut across her front. Her eyeridges flexed as her smile grew a little bigger.

“Just testing those reflexes,” Dilan said. “You don’t strike me as a typical drellahna. Especially with what you told me last night. . . What are your plans with that?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and nodding at the pile of wood beyond her left. Dahna twisted her neck briefly to glimpse over her shoulder his focus, and brought her gaze back to him, lowering the axe in front of her, swinging left to point its head at the small pile of uncleaned wood.

“Just setting up extras for when we come back. We leave it here in the cave, some further down in case it rains and the wood gets damp. Keeps us warm when we rest all night like last, don’t you agree?”

“Very. . . You. . . Hide here?” he asked, indicating the cave entrance with his left arm extending and waist turning, then resuming forward, the arm collecting back to its place in his opposite arm.

“Yes and no,” she said with a little weave of her crests, pausing. “It is home until we know we are safe.”

“What are you running from?”

“Nothing,” she replied briskly.

He waited, checking his memory if he had heard right. “You said you’re hiding. Doesn’t that mean—“

“It’s different from running,” she said, slightly annoyed. Her right hand rose to her halak and set firmly against it, her elbow bent towards him. “We have no intention to run, but we must hide in order not to be found. It is how it is now that my father is dead and my brother gone. The Kerhasi have named my treasach Serepta tierra, and I must either report to the Craig for being distributed per my new tierra, which I do not want for it would mean grave matters to one such as me, and I bide my time until I figure out next steps.”

“Which would be?”

“To travel,” she lifted her chin some before lowering down and tilting her crests forward and left of him. “I need to go north to find another treasach that owes me a fealty for what my brother performed in order to be taken in by these diallo Kerhasi Kratos that live in Umay.”

Dilan bent his copper brown eyeridges. “You belong to them now?”

Dahna lifted her chin with pride. A rebelliousness as well. “I am a Tyrannus Ilori. I belong to no one.”

“Then why are you trying to find a way to avoid these. . . Drell?” Dilan asked, motioning with the shifting of his hands forward and back before him.

“I. . .” Dahna looked down, then away from him, forward. She turned towards the stump and rearranged the right block onto an even side. “I belong to no one,” she repeated, her tone firm yet reduced in force by the contemplation of her predicament.

She raised her chin to her right shoulder and spoke to Dilan: “What are you running from. . . You’re surely not from around here if you don’t understand tierra or know who the Kerhasi are.” Her face turned back forward, gazing down as she lifted the small axe in both grips, raised it over her crests, and swung downwards with another _knock_ and _clotter_ of wood splitting in two pieces. Her shoulders turned as she tugged upwards and then stepped a little over to the left. Dilan’s smile returned full force after having faded a little at what she’d said.

“I told you I’m from—“

“The seireadan, I know,” Dahna interrupted, straightening from her work, looking it over, then turning her face and right shoulder open to him with a twist of her waist. Dilan’s eyes jumped from her red folds of tebris above the halak. “You even said you had a dead wife named Petenka, that she died the Kris, and yet you wear no klara ( _wrist-ring_ ) in memory or a mita ( _neck-ring_ ) of bondage. So you’re either a liar or a crook. Which is it, I wonder,” she mused aloud to herself as she uncoiled back towards the stump. She bent down. Dilan’s face was blank. He blinked, opening and closing his mouth as if this would motivate a new lie.

“I come from the kosme, if you really must know,” he said after a moment, defeated and uncrossing his arms to plant his hands on his waist and reshifting his center of gravity as he stepped both boots apart outside his hips. Dahna’s head popped up, a little gap in the center of her pursed pout, eyes widened, too. Straightened, she turned completely around to face him.

“The kosme?” she repeated, lowering her crests and squinting at him as though he were too bright of a sudden. She tilted her crests, scrutinizing him with suspicion. Holding the axe up in her right glove, ready to use, she walked around his left side, Dilan turning slightly with her as though he expected a strike. She had her neck bent, then straightened at where his back would have been before her stalking walkabout.

She poked her lips forward. “You said you were from the seireadan. What else have you lied about? Does _Petenka_ even exist? I let you sleep with us last night in our cave, trusting you. Liar.” She looked down and up at him again, her simmering gaze incriminating him. Dilan put up his hands as she pressed her lips together, shaking her head, raising the axe to her shoulder behind her, then instead of using it to smite him, she dropped it, swirled, and stalked off towards the cave mouth of pooled up rocks, halak swinging frantically with the rapid and alluring figure-eights of her smooth hips. Dilan stared after her, jaw partly hung, and shook his head, turning some as he removed his eyes from the red swell of her tebral folds that were erotic, exotic, stimulating him to arousal, and all because she was so angry with him. He smoothed his left palm over his leather scalp, brought them down to his lower lip as he turned to look again, pinched his square chin, and strode off to the cave entrance as her figure dropped, legs tight together and arms collected around her, a perfect line. In five strides, he was leaning over the mouth, looking down into the hole.

“I wasn’t going to thieve from you or hurt you at all.” He raised his hands and dropped these uselessly. Glancing at his right hand with the glove, he rolled his lips inside his mouth, squeezing the skin of his patak together, then looking back down. “Come on. . . Don’t be like that. Come up out of your hole. . . I’m not a threat. Not like that _thing_ down there you’re living with.” Her distant voice echoed up to meet his hearing.

“Go away. I told you my truth and you lied to us.” Dilan shifted his weight left and right, bringing his crests up to twist his head both sides in a brief scan of his surroundings before focusing back down into the mouth of the cave entrance.

“You’re acting like a child. Some princess you are.” He crossed his arms under his chest, tapping his left boot toe, seeing whether the jab worked or not. It didn’t, and he was only met with silence. He bent his head forward again. “Alright, I didn’t mean that. . . Not the second part,” he said, glanced up and then back down. He bent his crests left. “Why don’t you come back up here and ask me what you wanted to know. I. . .” He dropped his arms to his sides, shrugging his shoulders and opening his palms out before clutching the front fabric of his pants’ thighs. “I can’t apologize to you like this. It’s just silly. . . Come up here, please. Please?”

“Do you have a dead wife? Or are you hiding one?” her voice returned, inflected.

“No,” he said, blunt, shrugged again. “I’m not even married.” He set his lips together for a pause, gazed upwards in front of him. “Never been. I just made up that story to make you feel better. Like you could talk to someone. That other fellow was tending the fire and I. . .” He gazed down into the mouth. “I wanted to thank you for the salve. Which, by the way, stings like hekla. . . Could—would you mind helping with it? Maybe there’s something wrong and it’s not healing right.” He grinned.

“It’s supposed to sting,” she hollowed up an answer. “It means it’s working. Go to the water and wash it off if it bothers you so much, you big baby, then get lost. . . And watch out for the bered.”

“Bered,” he muttered, eyeridges flattened at being called ‘baby’. He brusquely tapped his left boot toe again, looking up towards his front and left. He turned his face down as he spoke, “I thought you said they weren’t a threat to Drell.”

“The ones in the tunnels are called the _beren_. The ones in the sea are called the _bered_ ,” she hollowed up to him as though speaking to a child. Then she added, accusingly, “You’d know that if you weren’t some lying stranger trying to get a free bed and meal from us.” Dilan frowned down at the hole, his hands supporting his bulk by gripping his thighs just above the knees.

Straightening up, Dilan groaned, half blowing out through his mouth. He gazed towards the southeast. Waves were tipped with white as the wind started blowing offshore, the rolls of crests moving slowly southwest. The clothing at his front and the cape at his back rippled with the push of the wind rising from the south. It was warm air. Dilan turned his gaze right, no smile on his face.

He walked off towards the woods, the dilean twins’ heads raising up on their long necks to watch him pass ahead of them, out of reach.

Down in the cave, Dahna sat against the beren, stroking its black head under her right elbow as she reclined her side against its neck, knees folded atop its left forearm. The oval red eyes opened and eclipsed as it enjoyed the company she was paying its smooth pate, rubbing her white palm side to side over a broad piece of smooth flesh. She stared forward, white skin and pale halak reflecting most of the light from the mouth of the tunnel. A resentful sigh left her lips.

Pulling herself up out of the cave exit, she pushed her palms down, lithely drawing her knees up to set her boots down on the rock lip.

She squatted into a stand with the halak waving gently between her shins. She gazed ahead, face slightly tensed. The wind pushed the halak against the inside curve of her right leg.

She thought she saw Cuillean for a brief second, his long, flat crests tilted up behind his head as his chin bowed down. He was leaned against a tree on the woodline of the clearing, his gaze on the orange needles over the forest floor. A severe pang of loss hit her and she drove off the pain of the sharp stab with a deep breath. It was only Dilan’s caped figure, his hood up on his head, leaning against the same tree.

Dahna shook her crests and started striding forward from the ring of raised black rock.

She crossed the clearing between the mouth of the cave and the trees, Tille and Tihalt turning an eye each at her. They began to chuck their hooked black beaks in eager anticipation of her greeting. Dilan’s hood moved as he turned his face towards her presence, his left hand raising from being held across his chest to thrust the hood back and reveal his crests. His smile, without teeth showing, came forth as he leaned off the trunk, setting down his left boot sole and pivoting from his right boot to stand and turn. He began walking to meet her halfway. The clearing, Tille and Tihalt, Dilan. . . Even the trees, canopy, and sky suddenly faded. Everything was replaced by a large, hollow room filled with tiers above a stone wall rising above a ring of brown hooded robes, tall ominous figures standing either side and ahead of her. There was shadow only in the upper story. Faint firelight over them, and at solitary intervals along the curving stone wall. Beneath the hoods she saw no faces. Only that they were tall, their ratty brown sleeves dark and held together, some hanging at their sides, or held behind them. The gaping hoods on her left and right turned towards her arrival, and those before her lifted their black holes beneath the dark cloths. One parted its sleeves to raise invisible hands to its hood, pushing it back, revealing nothing.

Dahna stopped walking, her red eyes going wide as her lips parted in awe of the vision. Behind her, the clouds still scudded in the sky, waves still rolled southwest, crests still broke white, and the bluff was dry with orange soil and pebbles. Here and there, a vagrant sprouting of green grass.

“Hey. Hey!” Dilan said, six inches from her face, his head tilted as he looked at her with his eyeridges bent down in consternation. He waved his right gloved fingers in front of her eyes, trying to get Dahna’s attention. He straightened, moving three more inches back, studying her with bewilderment. His eyeridges suddenly crooked upward. “You know, you never told me your name.”

Dahna’s red eyes blinked, the lateral, translucent, inner shields closing and opening, the top and bottom lids revealing black dashes as these joined in the following blink that included both sets. She raised her face, lips slightly apart, and stared into a distance just right of Dilan’s lowerleft crest ridge. Her lips moved to form the words, “I’m a sooleawa,” in a ghostly whisper. A shaking breath followed and Dahna shivered as though she were suddenly cold in the warm wind. Her shoulders cringed upward as her eyes lifted, eyelids all shuttering simultaneously. Her head rolled back, crests hung down, and the ruby folds of her neck’s tebris bared behind her fingers as she curled these upwards in front of her, forearms drawn together.

Dilan stepped forward, catching her wrists, one in each hand, his eyes widening and jaw drawing down with surprise. He didn’t know what was happening, only that she was about to fall, and did so, backwards.

His staged his knee between her legs, bumping the halak clear to the other side. The wind caught and tugged it off of his knee so that it flapped and caught around his leg. He tried holding up both wrists but as she spilled downward and leaned, he suddenly brought her left wrist behind her lower back to support both. Her right arm he pulled upward with his left hand, trying to pluck her up like a puppet. “Look. . . Look at me, damn you!” he urged, hoping she would wake up, that it was just a stupid game played by a dramatic drellahna. Any moment the other one might appear and he might well be murdered for laying a hand on her, never mind two. . . Dilan spun his head left to right, looking for a sign of the Morthwyl, while supporting Dahna against his body and thigh. Her face was relaxed into unconsciousness, her eyes closed. Dilan shuffled his boots, amazed at how heavy she was, and lowered her right hand as he knelt all the way down to the grass and dirt in order to support her. His left hand released her right wrist and moved to between her shoulder blades, fingercrawling with jerks of his arm, trying to bop her up and collect the back of her crests to support her head, while his forearm crossed her upper back.

Her face wobbled close under his as he finalized a better hold. Her lips fell apart, revealing the roof of her mouth. Dilan stared at it, his mouth open and breathing through this. His eyeridges bent and folded. Holding her steady and so close, he now had an opportunity to see she had pigmentation in her eyelids and was not a true albino. Black little dashes striated the hidden skin folds. He studied these fine details of her eyelids, gaze drifting over the pearl shimmer of her patak, to her sensual pout, teeth seen in between. He readjusted his grip on her, hugging closer until he could peer at the left side of her face.

The pearl-white bachir behind her tebris was lifted by his conjoined fingers. Raising it upward, nothing but unblemished, grey-pink skin was seen beneath the thick, two inch-wide flap of loose scale.

Dilan leaned his face away, turning hers right to expose the other bachir, and repeated the inspection there. “You really aren’t owned,” he said in some awe to her, jostling her some to hold her face upright in his glove. His eyes fell to her mouth and he sniffed her breath. “Doesn’t smell like anything she took,” he mumbled to no one in particular. His eyes rolled up to the right of his skull in thought. “Well, it worked on those Human vids,” he said with a small shrug, opening his mouth and tilting his face towards hers. He jerked away and looked left as the trees between them a distance back rattled their branches and leaves. The Morthwyl stepped out with some leggy, elongated, furry creature over his left shoulder and a cluster of long sticks in his lower right grip. His grey halak swept between his shins as he calmly looked left at the bluff and brought his red gaze to Dilan and Dahna. Dilan stared as the Morthwyl continued to cross the rest of the five yards towards them and stopped when he was two feet away from Dahna’s limp form. :(What happened.)

Dilan had to blink. Still alive, he was, and the Morthwyl, unpanicked. “She fell. Said something about ‘sooleawa’, then just stopped everything. I swear, I know what it looks like, but I caught her so she wouldn’t hit the ground and hurt herself.” Dilan’s face turned down to Dahna’s dreamlike composition. “She’s breathing still. I don’t smell any poison.” His right hand turned Dahna’s face towards the Morthwyl as he lowered into a splitting squat for a closer study. A trill emitted from his tebris, the red and silver folds expanding and vibrating as he tilted his jade black patak at her. Dahna released a huff of frozen breath and twitched her face farther right. Dilan could feel the muscles contracting in her body through the halak and through his clothes, tensing with synapses drawing these back into action. He couldn’t deny that the thought of something so strong in a bed with him could make for a very probable good time. Dahna’s head rolled left, supported in Dilan’s loosening grip, paused as she took another breath that was deeper, winced, and slowly turned forward as her shoulders started to rise, bending her elbows, the curves of her wrists elevating and sliding the backs of her hands up the loose folds of tunic over Dilan’s stomach. He grinned as he and the Morthwyl watched her come back to life. Dahna made another soft grunt in her throat and bent her neck, face tensing again as she raised a hand to ball and rub the knuckles against the outer corner of her right eye. Her fingers extended to touch her face as she opened her eyelids, the black dashes disappearing. Dilan popped his eyeridges up as he leaned backwards, broadly smiling at her recovery, and semi-bracing for a start.

Blurred greens, yellows, browns, oranges, and greys came into the haze of her vision. Blinking, Dahna’s left fingers caught on some heavy fabric and she had to slide her palm down over the curve of something hard, but yielding. Her hand stopped as she pushed against it. A test. Once, tentative. Twice, exploring. She stretched her eyelids wide, awaiting her palette of colors to come into more concise definition. Gradually, she recognized there was a handsome Drell grinning back at her, teeth showing, his patak flexed with the smile’s corners, and copper eyes that were a little too joking for her comfort. She leaned away, jamming the shallow of right thumb and outer conjoined finger hard against the yellow-orange tebris. Dilan’s mouth dropped open with a strangled croak, his eyes widening as he started to fight for air.

She fell backwards onto the ground, rolled, and set into a crouch, one knee with her shin parallel to the dirt, her other knee bent with the shin perpendicular. Her left arm bent with the fingers slightly touching the soft, warm soil as she glared at him with her face tilted up from the left by her shoulder, her right arm raised out in the same defensive position. Her tebris started to swell and shake with a quiet rustle.

Dilan supported himself on his right arm, stiffened down and posting into the soil, his eyes wide and mouth opening and closing for air as he drew hoarse rasps with his throat. His left hand was clutching the joint between his jaw and neck where she had compressed the tebris inwards. The Morthwyl stood, quietly and calmly watching Dilan choke, then patiently setting down his kill and the bundle of rods. He walked over to the suffering Dilan who stared up leftwards at him through the diagonal of his teeter. The Morthwyl knelt beside him, Dilan wheezing as a suffocating animal in a chokehold, his eyes following the Morthwyl’s emotionless expression as he squatted with his knees flared out to the sides. The halak fell into folds down on the ground between his black boots. Dilan made some desperate sounds with his mouth gaping and closing as he pointed with his left fingers at the neck. Setting his elbows on each knee, hands held loose in front of his halak, the Morthwyl tilted his smooth head to the left, red eyes locking with Dilan’s bulging stare. :(You touched a drellahna who does not like to be touched. You have no right to lay hands on her, but in this case, it is understood you were only trying to assist. Were you attempting anything other, then you would be dead. She has only rendered you breathless, whereas you could have been killed had she pushed harder and broken your larynx with the trachea. You would be like me, voiceless, soundless, except for the trill of your organ. . . But not if you were deceased.) The Morthwyl’s gaze went down to the orange soil, soft and disturbed by Dilan’s boots. Dilan’s stare followed. Turning towards the cluster of rods, the Morthwyl slid out a smooth, brown stick, nearly perfect in straightness and shaved down with a special stripper he kept hidden in his halak. Sliding it forward of the bundle among others, he held it up with his left hand and brought this into his right, gaze returning to Dilan’s. :(You have a choice now. I am going to give you this kaja stem to write out characters in the soil. You will answer her questions, and maybe she will let you live, or maybe she will let you die.) Separating his palms, the fingers pointed down and the stem secured by his right thumb, the Morthwyl casually shrugged. :(It all depends on whether what you tell us is true or not, and if she likes it. . . If you are found to be a threat to us, inevitably you will expire by asphyxiation and hunger. . . Die. We will not be affected by this. . . Blink if you understand. Blink twice if you disagree. Now.) Dilan blinked, held his eyes closed, and opened his lids wide, making sure not to blink again.  
:(Excellent.) The Morthwyl thrummed. :(Let us start by asking you to write out your entire name. Spell it correctly, no errors. I assume if you are from the kosme as you said you were, you will know your characters, yes? Blink twice, so I may be corrected if I am wrong. Now.) Dilan stretched his eyelids wide. Maintaining his stare, he drew in shallow pulls of air. He was still nursing his neck with his left hand. The Morthwyl offered the stem to Dilan and tilted his jet black crests down. :(Please, if you will.) Dahna crossed behind the Morthwyl, watching as Dilan detached his hand from his throat to take the stem, licked his lips and held his mouth open. He leaned forward over his bent knee to quickly write his name with the sharp tip of stem into the yielding soil.

DILAN KRYOS

His hand, guiding the stick from right to left, produced the loops and swirls of their language with a faintly foreign dissimilarity to what they were accustomed to reading and writing in their own hands. The stem gouged deeper into the soil, a wrath in the reveal of his name. He stabbed the stem down, end to the sky, when he was finished.

Dahna studied the handwriting, memorizing the name and the way in which Dilan’s hand had formed the characters with the Morthwyl’s writing implement. From over the Morthwyl’s head, she demanded, “Ask him what he’s doing here and who sent him. Be careful.” She raised her gaze to Dilan’s bent back. “He likes to make up stories.”

:(I don’t think he has time for any stories longer than a few words, especially since he has to write them into the soil. . . Answer her question.) The Morthwyl’s gaze fell from Dahna to Dilan’s eyes.   
:(First, why you are here. Second, underneath the first, write who it is that sent you. . . Your handle.)

Breaths coming in torturous little rasps through his mouth, Dilan narrowed both eyes at them, particularly upon hearing the description of sound meant to be construed as _handle_ , and turned his face back towards the ground. He ran his tongue over the lower lip again as he wrote beneath his name the answer to the first question: Why he was here.

TRADE

And moving his boots and knees to slide backward some for more writing space, the stem’s tip, controlled by his hand, went down to the next sprawl of dirt beneath that first word.

FREE

He set the stem point down into the dirt beneath this and at the right. He looked up expectantly to those on his left.

Dahna stepped around the Morthwyl and crouched down onto her hands and knees in front of Dilan. His face followed her and shifted back some as she crawled forward over the writing and poked her face up towards his. Her eyelids starred as she glared through these into his eyes. “I should kill you for touching me. I slit the last throat that put its hands on me without my permission. I will let you breathe now if you don’t mind. I expect honesty from you now and into the future, and perhaps we can help you set up your free trade. My one request is that you let us in on all of your deals. A cut, so we may continue this relationship. . . Do you understand and accept? Blink once. Now.”

Dilan stared at her, having leaned back to avoid her face. This time, the blink came only after a long three seconds, Dilan taking his time to think it over despite his lacking of air.

Dahna did not show it, but beneath her calm visage, she was smiling inwardly, admiring Dilan’s self possession. He could not be rushed, even with his breath in jeopardy.

Dilan, his mouth collected together in a puss and his chest rising and falling in front of her, copper eyes less panicked and more hardened, the wheezing continued, only through his nostrils. He slowly blinked, compressing the lids deliberately together, then narrowed his eyes into the folds of two pairs of each copper orb. He did not blink a second time.

Dahna’s hands left the soil, her tebris and chest rising in front of him.

She moved her white hand beneath his jaw, Dilan in control of the labored breathing, the wheezing softening. His stare went passed her arm. Nestling her thumb and fingers into the firmer, heavier folds of his tebris between jaw and throat, her thumb pressed inward, rolling up and massaging deeply until she felt the desired mass underneath. With a quick _pop_ induced by the precise squeeze of measuring fingers, she removed her hand quickly and slapped the right side of his patak. Dilan was forced to suck in a sudden, painful bubble of air, which helped force the tissues in his throat’s anterior to spring outward. There was an alien clicking sound as the cartilage forced outwards and full, unhindered air rushed inwards to his lungs. Dilan’s eyes enlarged at the sudden exchange and its unexpected results. He clasped his left hand to his throat and backed away.

“That wasn’t necessary,” he grated through, hoarse, still supporting himself on his right hand at ground level as he bent again, angling his eyes upward at Dahna. She had risen to one knee and stood up, the Morthwyl bending to pluck the rod set tip down into the dirt, which he slid back into the bundle of kaja stems he held slanted in his left hand. Dahna walked over the dirt, across Dilan’s path, whose glare followed after her.

:(You shouldn’t have tried to kiss her.) remarked the Morthwyl, looking down at his arrangement of stems. His red, cool gaze came up right to Dilan, a placidness in the silent face of night.

Dilan was still glowering at Dahna. He stopped nursing his throat and bent his back upwards. From his half kneel, he stood. “You could have asked when you came to. . . You immediately thought I was an enemy.”

“You are a stranger who lies,” Dahna said over her shoulder, having made her way to the grazing dileans who stopped and raised their necks to greet her. Her hands were around Tihalt’s feathered head, stroking the cheek, and scratching his throat. She gave out a doleful, jeweled-eye look to Dilan. “Maybe next time you will think better than to deceive me.”

“Next time I’ll just let you drop,” Dilan said, his hands curled and loosening at his sides.

:(Come, we have food to cook. Then we must travel to arrange you with what you wish to trade.) The Morthwyl collected the legs of the white and brown-haired animal, calmly draping it over his left shoulder again with one hand gathering the small hocks. He proceeded then to walk away from Dilan, towards the mouth of the cave and bluff.

Dilan strode over to Dahna, aware she was holding Tihalt’s head in her hands. She did not look at him, though she felt his angry presence. Dilan stared at the right side of her face. For the moment, Tille glanced over with a curious golden eye, but showed no other intent or interest, and Tihalt’s eyes were half-closed in the warmth of the suns, and Dahna’s expert hands picked through his feathers and fur, as though she were his mother doing so with her large claws. Wind ruffled the back of his head, blowing up the larger fronds of feathers and wisps of white and colored fur, hiding the eyes of the male dilean. “You could have asked,” Dilan repeated himself, his voice tightened and lowered.

“I prefer to subjugate my intended recipients of questioning before I simply think they will give me the honest truth, especially after they’ve been called on to tender it once caught.” Her head tilted left, examining Tihalt’s furline along the grey and black beak’s border.

“ _You could have asked,_ ” Dilan repeated a third time, emphasizing each word. His eyeridges lifted, unbending. “I could have told you,” he added. “Instead,” lifting his left arm towards what lay behind them, figuratively and literally, “you had your silent friend hiding in the treeline, listening and watching the entire while. . . Does it mean anything to you that you had a fit and I caught you to help? Does that not account for my intentions?” His face tried to look into hers, but Dahna kept her focus on Tihalt’s nits.

“It may account for something,” Dahna said after a moment’s reflection. She turned Tihalt’s beak left of her face and squinted both eyes. Dilan shifted his weight in agitation.

“And what’s the deal with the ‘sooleawa’ thing you said. . . Should we be concerned about that?” He gestured with his arm, again, behind them. “Are you going to tell him what happened or include me? And what’s your name? Are you going to at least compensate me with the grace of your title, oh _majesty_ of the Isles?” He delivered this with sarcasm and a weave of his crests, narrowing his eyes at her. His chin popped forward over his chest.

Dahna smiled and glanced her eyes at Dilan, but returned these to Tihalt. She cuffed the dilean’s head, cuing him to move on to his right. Tille turned her head, her body following. “I think I will take your advice and tell him about what I saw. . . Not that it is for you to know.” She set her hands on her waist’s tebral folds and watched the dilean twins move away. “I appreciate that you did try to catch me when I fell. I’m sorry you had to witness that, and that we had to set you up for me to learn of you and what you’re telling—whether it is the truth or not.” She turned her face to his. “We have our ways down here with zhen. We don’t like to dabble and make mistakes. Force is sometimes the best way and the quickest path.” She dropped her arms and let these swing with her as she stepped away from him. Dilan rolled his lips between his teeth, pressing patak together, then stalked off after Dahna.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” he roughly said with a curt nod of his head, catching up to her as she headed to the Morthwyl arranging a new fire by the bluff’s edge. This time Dahna lookedresponsively over her right shoulder at Dilan, stepping left some to let him stride into place beside her. She raised her right hand and gripped his crests, giving his head a little shake before she let go, facing forward again. He slapped her hard bottom through the cream halak, shifting the flap upward with the flat of his left palm. He immediately pointed his right fingers at her face as she turned this sharply to his nose at her right, her own arm raised, fingers pointed warningly at him with an elbow bent. “No touching, or I fight back from now on,” he said in settlement as they walked, “and I can fight dirty, too.” Halos of sunlight glinted off their heads and Dahna’s bare upper torso and legs. The sea ahead of the bluff in the distance shown blindingly bright this mid-morning hour, reflecting glimmering sunlight over its living mirrors. Dahna and Dilan passed the black mouth of the cave on their left, its stones rising five hands from the ground at its highest, and curved back towards the Morthwyl’s new fireplace. Dahna stepped away from Dilan and bent to the Morthwyl, looking at the kill he was preparing with his hands, a rock, and a knife. Dilan stood some distance back, putting his hands on his hips and pushing the cape backwards as the Morthwyl crushed the skull of the critter with two rocks.

“Why are you doing that?” Dilan asked, a slight grimace on his face as he watched the Morthwyl raise the smooth stone again.

:(The venom is in the head. Crush it, and it will keep it from returning to the belly. Must be good for it to be any use.) The Morthwyl did not look up, but set aside the bloodied stone and began to pick through the remains.

Dahna even made a face at what he was doing. She crouched beside him, watching with her wrists on her knees.

:(We need to get going. The dunes will be wild at night farther west. Wyrrtun will be a problem. This venom from the sheena will be useful if we are bitten. I don’t think you and I will be hurt.) He raised his head to Dahna, a small knife in his left hand and the dead critter’s neck in his right. Dahna smiled at him and he smiled back at her. She turned her head to look up towards Dilan.

“You are not familiar with wyrrtun, are you?” she asked, bending and touching her fingers together.

“I hardly was born yesterday,” Dilan replied, coarse. “I think I may know a thing or two about killing the pests.”

“How is your venom?” she asked, eyes jumping up.

Dilan bent his brow scales. “Tell me your name first.” She looked down at the Morthwyl, then back to Dilan.

She touched her fingers to her chest. “I am Dahna. Kiross is my clan.” Her hand returned to nest with her other.

“Kiross.” Dilan glanced right to the water. “You don’t sound like a Kiross. . . But it’s closely the same to my name.” His arms crossed over his chest.

“I don’t think Kryos and Kiross are the same,” she replied, setting down one knee, careful to avoid the spill of blood touching her skin or the halak. “I think they mean different things.”

“Kryos means truth-giver.” He raised one eyeridge. “Which is funny, now that I think of it.”

“And Kiross means glade-crosser,” Dahna replied, then more soft-spoken, added, “or passer of the seireadan.” She looked down, still holding her fingertips together and pinching them, then she returned her gaze with a slight side squint and tilt as she sought to see his face with the glare of sun off his scales and bright blue sky framing him from above. “Either way, I am to cross a large space in my life. . . It is destiny, to be so named.”

Dilan smiled, exhaling roughly through his nostrils. He set his hands back on his hips. “That’s some talk. You plan on crossing this one?” he asked, looking up and waving his right hand out behind her.

Dahna turned and looked at the sea bay. She was quiet for a spell, squinting over the water. The Morthwyl’s shoulders made quick movements as his head moved back and forth, looking down at his work. Dilan gazed to the sea as well. “I don’t know if it is this seireadan, but all my life, I have been crossing great distances,” she said, and looked down. “Maybe some are not tangible, like the ground we walk on. . . But they are great distances no less,” she continued, looking to the Morthwyl whose red eyes glanced at her. He gave her a small smile and bent his focus down again.

Dilan opened his mouth, the wind pushing at him, and then turned his face.

His gaze fell to the Morthwyl by the fire, gutting the remnants of sheena and tossing these into the flames. “What’s your name?” Dilan asked him.

:(I have no name.) He didn’t look up, only continued with the preparation of the sheena. Dahna turned her face up to Dilan.

“He has a name.” Dahna said matter of factly, “It is sacred to a Morthwyl not to give out his name to anyone.”

Dilan stuck his right hand out at her. “Not even you? You’re practically lovers.”

Both the Morthwyl and Dahna’s eyes went wide red. They looked at each other. Dahna stood up, holding her palms out to Dilan and touching his tunic about the chest as she tilted her head, staring up at him. “Do not say that.”

“Why?” He lifted his left hand in a casual wave of dismissal, glancing to his left before back at her. “You worried someone’s going to know?” She withdrew her hands, holding one above the other with a slight apprehension hunching her shoulders.

“The trees have eyes and ears, Dilan,” Dahna said softly, looking to her right. “We are not entirely alone here. Nor at night.” She brought her face forward again, looking at him. “We sleep because we need rest. The Borhala hunt because they need to kill. And the Kerhasla watch because they plan for the centuries to come.”

“You speaking riddles, Dahna?” Dilan asked her gently, tilting his crests left. “You trying to tell me that besides that beren down there,” he thumbed his left hand behind his shoulder, “there are other things that go bump in the dark?” She nodded. “You look scared.”

“Do not say that we are lovers,” she insisted again, specific this time. “We have never touched. . . Not. . . That way,” she murmured, hiding her lips with a cupped right hand over the side of her mouth.

“Just foot rubs and tummy tickles?” Dilan asked teasingly, looking up at the Morthwyl who could only shake his head as he cooked the food and prepped by the fire. Dahna looked at Dilan, somewhat impatient. “Serious. . . You two are close, but you don’t get to. . .” The tilt of her head and the raise of her eyeridges and arms to beneath her chest plats made him stop. He chuckled, rubbing his chin as he peered down at her.

“So are you. . .” His expression became playful. “A drellahna who has never. . .” She didn’t move or answer. “I see.” Dilan chuckled again and turned his face to the Morthwyl. “You don’t want to sleep with her?” He raised his eyeridges and turned his face back to Dahna. “Judging by that look he just gave me, I better play my cards close.” He set his hands on his belt. “Would you tell me what I should call him at least?” He nodded his crests towards the Morthwyl. “Just in case I have to shout for him for you or something happens.” Dahna turned around and lowered herself down. Dilan watched her, then glanced at the fire. “Is it time to eat?” He loosed his hands and walked over to join. “I’m famished. Can’t wait to see what this sheena is all about.” He lowered down, too.

Sitting beside Dahna and facing the Morthwyl, the fire on his left, Dilan watched as the first to reach into the flames and pull out some charred pink and black meat was yet again the Morthwyl. He handed the food to Dahna’s cupped palm, then reached in and took out piece by piece more. Dahna began to feed herself, picking up the—it was safe to say—scorching hot morsels, blowing on these before hanging each strip into her mouth.

Dilan watched her eating, his mouth slightly agape. He looked at the Morthwyl. “Are you sure it’s safe to eat food so hot? You just took it out of the fire with your fingers,” he looked down at the flames and up at the Morthwyl. “You do this often enough you can’t feel burning?”

:(I am from the fire lands. We do not fear fire.)

“I can see that,” Dilan said, hands on his knees. He looked at his right hand with the butching glove, then up across at the Morthwyl again. “You going to pass me some or shall I turn white and look like her to get some grub around here,” Dilan tossed his crests at Dahna, who looked over at him with a small, appeased grin, and resumed eating her meal. Dilan stared at her, then at the Morthwyl.

:(You touched her when you hit her rump. You can play with fire, it would seem. Test that mettle of yours by fetching your own meat strip. I’ve left your allotment right there.) The Morthwyl’s black hand gestured towards Dilan’s side.

“You know I’m not from any fire lands and she touched me first. I have a right to defend myself with a counterstrike.” He cast Dahna a reproachful look. “Felt good about it, too.” She glanced at him, resumed eating with a shake of her head.

The Morthwyl steadied a red-eyed stare at the Drell across from him. He did nothing for a moment, then turned to his right and retrieved from behind him one of the kaja stems, sliding it out of the bundle. He turned forward and extended the stem to Dilan. :(Use that to pierce your food. I am no Drell’s Serepta. . .) He looked at Dahna. :(And neither are you.) Dahna responded by reaching across to him and swiping her fingers over his lips, not making contact. The Morthwyl’s eyes seemed to slant and glow as he smiled and leaned back onto his hips.

“The two of you,” Dilan said, reaching the stem into the fire and poking up a strip of meat, returning it through the flames to his butching glove to hold onto, and repeating with the rest of the strips so these would not burn. “Petals and flowers. . . Go get married already. Make babies,” he said, waving his stick at them before bending his head and raising his glove to put a strip between his teeth. He pulled back his lips as far as his whites would show, and clamping delicately on the end of one strip, quickly snapped his head back and lifted the meat like a dilean to get the food started on its journey to his belly. He winced and groaned as the juices seared, but the meat was good and succulent. He bent to nip another piece, then noticed the Morthwyl and Dahna were not eating theirs. He raised his chin, looking at them both from one to the other. “What’s wrong. . . Was it something I said?”

Dahna looked away from him, down at the ground. She stood up after a moment and hopped down the bluff, crests disappearing from Dilan’s view.

The Morthwyl resumed raising his meat to his mouth in quiet introspection. He did not chew. The food merely went in and he swallowed it, Dilan assumed, who had watched. “Why did she just leave? Was it what I just said about you two?”

The Morthwyl glanced at him and remained silent. Dilan stared, then looked towards the sea. He shook his head and resumed eating after muttering a “Damned if I know. . .”


	28. Chapter 28

“So are you going to tell us about this sooleawa revelation you had that got me on my hands and knees trying to breathe a cup of air thanks to your. . . Whatever you did,” Dilan asked, scanning around the chopping stump for more blocks of wood. He held at least seven wrapped snug in the crook of his right arm already, and bent to reach for two more. Behind him as he glanced over at her, Dahna lifted up a pile of eight stacked against her chest, cradled in her arms. She blinked back at him, then walked on. “We will go see the sooleawa at the treasach we shall attend tonight, if we leave on time,” she added, walking by him. Dilan straightened and turned to follow her.

They crossed patches of withering grass, thirsting in the dual suns, Dahna ahead of Dilan with her pile of blocks, the treeline being covered in light and their bark and under layers clearer beneath the greener canopy of their branches both low and higher up.

Stopping and turning at the mouth of the tunnel entrance, Dahna dropped her wood into the cave by a spread of her arms, one foot perched on the higher lip of stone, the other straightened out behind her, a step down. She crouched, turned, and lowered herself into the cave. The Morthwyl was cleaning by the fire area, sifting and spreading out ashes, as Tille and Tihalt meandered over to the southern slope of the bluff. Dilan stood over the cave mouth. “I’m not going in there, especially with that thing you said,” he spoke down into the hole. Dahna’s white crests gleamed as they came up, she looking at him. She tapped the edge of the rock lip.

“Come down. I’ll introduce you. He’s harmless.” Her hand returned into the hole and her head turned from him as she lowered down. After a few seconds, Dilan’s lips tight together and his right arm still holding his collected wood, he lowered into a squat, stuck one leg out as he cleared his left hip to sit on the ledge, and checking to make sure he had a good grip on the blocks, hung both legs inside the hole and slid down with a hiss of clothes over the smooth stone.

He bumped his gun against his back, and reached behind himself when he landed on the stones below to check his piece, left hand feeling beneath the cape. When he turned back forward, Dahna was there, looking at him from the lower stones. She tilted her crests up, looking at where his hand had gone, and reaching with her right hand, she stepped up on the stones to lean around him and feel for what he was hiding. Dilan kept his mouth closed, his eyes lifted with due annoyance, as he let his left arm remain raised, elbow bent out, the cape spanning over this. Dahna’s deft fingers removed the heavy, cold piece of metal from his waist belt. She took it from him, holding it carefully with her right hand under the crosshatched grip, left fingers supporting the long muzzle. Studying it, she drew it close to her as Dilan lowered his left arm, his eyes dropping to her face and observing her examination of the weapon. It was large, and would have required both her hands to hold it, whereas Dilan could grip and control the handpiece with one. She turned the gun’s grip end towards him, holding the piece higher to look inside the mouth of the blocky muzzle. Dilan’s whites of eyes stretched out as he reached for the barrel of the black piece with his left hand and plucked it upwards, directing the nozzle away from her quizzical face. She looked at him questioningly as Dilan held onto the barrel and lifted it away from her, pointed away from him. “It’s a weapon. Like that bolt you shot with that doohickey on your wrist the other day,” he checked the piece, regripping it in his left hand, and returned it to its place behind him in his belt holster, bending his arm around his waist and shrugging his shoulder to tuck the gun secure. He was looking at her as he did this, Dahna’s expression filled with genuine curiosity. “It’s not a toy, and you could have shot your face off—it’s loaded. So, please, if you will mind, don’t go taking my gun away again. You obviously don’t know what it is for being so wise,” he said, returning his left hand to set on the front of his bundle of wood. “Lead the way.” He nodded ahead of them.

“I’d like to know what it does,” she asked, looking down at his left side, as though she might see the gun peeking out from its hiding place.

“If you want to put your hands in my pants, better ask permission from him above,” Dilan replied, chucking his crests upward to indicate the Morthwyl. His hand went to his left hip as he lowered his gaze down to her standing on the bottom rolls of rocks. “If you ask nicely—me, that is—instead of prying my gun out of my belt, I will gladly show you.” They looked measuringly at each other. Dilan added with a nod, “You seem to think you can just take. . . Must be a way of the culture around here.” He poked his head forward, tilting his crests left as he chastised her. “You’ll get in trouble that way. . . Just taking things by force or fingers all the time.” Straightening his neck, he nodded again as he spoke, “I’m more than happy to show you if you just start asking.”

“You lied to me the first time.”

He raised his left hand, tick tocking his conjoined fingers side to side as he looked at her from the right corners of his eyes. “I said _maybe_ and I didn’t elaborate when we first met and you asked if I was from across the seireadan. . . I call it an ocean, by the way. Is that okay with you?” he asked, setting his hand back on his waist and bending his face down to her.

“Oh-zhen,” she repeated, using her interpretation of the sound, her fingers of her right hand raising to her lips in thought. She tilted her face down with her eyes. “You pronounce it as the land of the foreigner. . . Strangers from the sky. . .” She gazed up at him, Dilan’s face taking up a benign smile and tilt of crests at her.

“I suppose that could be right,” he said, somewhat mysterious. She looked at him with more puzzlement.

“How did you come from the kosme?” she asked, lowering her hand. She turned to her right, leading his gaze into the cavern with her back. Dilan glanced down at the rocks lit by the sky above him and balanced his way carefully after in pursuit.

Dahna’s lithe, terpsichorean body moved from stone to stone, passing the cool remains of the fire from the previous night on her right, Dilan’s disturbed matting on her left. Dilan did not pass either as the large red eyes farther down opened in the darkness beyond the light let in by the cave mouth. These raised two feet from their origin in the dark, just above the ground. Dahna wove easily towards the right of these, her brightness growing paler as she merged deeper with the shadow. Then Dilan realized the beren was all black as the blackest night, much like the Morthwyl. Dahna appeared to swivel her hips to the right and set down her halak and legs on something five inches above the stoney bottom. Her pale arms reached to her right to embrace a large, black mass that her lower left arm disappeared under, and she bent her waist, neck and crests leaning to the right, resting against the thing that was beren and full of nothingness to Dilan’s sight. Though the red eyes were apparent and had closed some at her touch. “Are you going to introduce me?” Dilan asked, touching his tunic about his navel. He took a cautious step further onto a closer rock. Dahna rubbed her left hand over what he assumed to be the head, what with her arm moving back and forth above the red eyes. There was something rather rousing about seeing a half-dressed, beautiful drellahna cuddling with something that seemed very large, very animal, and very sinister, if not downright dangerous.

“Tell me how you came here first,” Dahna replied, her right cheek’s tebris still laying against the beren, above the crescenting red eyes.

“I came by ship. Not the ships you float on water,” he explained readily, no qualms about being honest. He was curious about the beren. “I have a vessel that permits me to rise from the ocean and enter the cosmos.” He vaguely pointed up with his left conjoined fingers.

“How do you get it into the oh-zhen?” she asked, stretching her left arm over the beren, and raising her crests.

Dilan smiled, more to himself, and shook his head at the sultry imaginings going through his mind. _What a dream_ , he thought, before dousing his smile. “I land it. Simple as that.” He held his fingers together, palm flat, and dove it across his waist, left chest to right hip, looking back at her. His shoulders and crests were lit faintly by the backlight of the cave mouth. “Just bank it in and there you have it. Kind of like skipping a stone, minus the skips. . . Just has to get into the water, but at a low angle. Otherwise,” he shrugged, arm returning to hang by his side, “things get dicey.”

“Do you fly it?”

He grinned, lowering his brow ridges. “Of course, I fly it. Do I pilot it, you mean?” He nodded. “Yes, that I do, too.” He opened his palm and touched his chest beneath the closure of his cape. “I am a captain of my own vessel. It is nice. Free. . . Freedom at its best,” he said, knowing this would appeal to her.

Dahna’s head was fully raised, her hands still. He noticed her body subtly rising at an angle to her left and lowering back right, the effect of the beren she was reclined against breathing. His eyes took in everything of her. The tebral folds of her waist. The halak between her long thighs. The bareness of her upper half and the demure quality to her poising crests. _Kala_ , he thought, feeling a stir. _Figures I should find a drellahna as exotic as the vids on Fornax and she’s destined to be some futuristic killer of kings or what nonsense. . . And that Morthwyl upstairs—I mean, above this tunnel, cave, home, whatever. . ._

He pursed his lips, watching her. “How do you come from the ship if it is under water?” she asked, her voice softly resonating off the stoney walls.

“I take a raft, so to speak. It’s kind of like an underwater bubble. Takes me to where I need to be.”

“Do you hide it? Is it well hidden?”

His chuckle followed. “I think it would be well hidden, seeing that it returns to its place in the ship once delivering me to shore. . . Now you tell me,” he suddenly switched topics, “what happened to you before this morning’s little questioning of mine. You said something about soo-lee-wa,” he repronounced the word from his memory.

“It means vision,” she replied, not at all shy or withholding. Her crests tilted left as she looked up at him from her seat against the beren. “I am blessed with the curse, it would seem. . .”

“Why is it a curse? And what do you see?”

“I see places and shadows that are moments to be,” she replied, gazing at him, then turning her face down to her right, at the beren. Her right hand opened its fingers and fanned across the surface beneath, the beren’s red eyes widening and closing slightly. “Places and people meant to be. . . My mother said it would come when I was. . . Stressed. . . By extraordinary loss. . . And this has happened, what with my brother and father having been taken from me. . .”

“Why not get them back,” Dilan suggested. He bobbed his head. “Aside from your father, that is.”

“It would not be wise to do so,” she replied, still gazing down at her hand sweeping over the beren. “I am part of a proinnseas ( _program or plan_ ) that was set long ago. . . It is why we may never be together.” She raised her face towards the far mouth of the cave, left of Dilan’s figure. “It would only hurt him more than it will already.”

Dilan narrowed his eyes, turning his crests some to the left as he studied her, then turning his gaze full on, asked, “What would that matter? Are you supposed to die or marry someone else?”

“I am a weapon, Dilan,” she replied, chidingly. “I am no more than an arm to someone, though I walk and speak as though I am free. . . Those who know me will do what I ask, and I am treated with specialty by certain groups of individuals.” She raised her red eyes to him, then lowered her chin.

“I. . .” His mouth sought for a reply. He shifted his balance over the smooth stones, still holding his bundle of wooden blocks. “I don’t understand. . . A weapon. . .”

“Thanes have ever been the way to achieve gross means to an end here in Umay.” Her gaze settled on the beren, its eyes opening to become larger. “It is with blood we rectify great wrongs and imprisonments. . . The Terje Tierra has subjected Drell and drellahna to enormous atrocity. My father would not rule under its guidelines, and he did not want to be a part of the druce that demands— _demanded_ —his fealty. . . It is why he is dead, and his signal would be the hanging of his body from the staff of the Craig. . . This I have realized from my sight and my vision. . . I did not want it to be, but. . .” Her gaze lifted. “It is happening.”

“Is there going to be a war here?”

“Yes,” she said, stroking the beren, its eyes slanting and strikingly growing longer. Her arm slid to join her other hand in her lap as the large eyes on the blackness moved up ten feet into the height of the tunnel.

Dilan’s head tilted backward, staring, his eyes wide.

Dahna was still seated on its arm or foreleg, her knees bent to her right, ankles and shins left and lined together. “I am its shadow, the war’s,” she said, hooking her fingers in her lap. She smiled at the irony. “I am its coming, the sign of the sooleawa that has named me, Dahna of the Fire. . . I may not be touched or slept with unless I give my permission. . . I will set the world on fire with what I bring from across the seireadan and down from the skies.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Dilan said, calm. His left arm hung by his side, not sure if he was certain of her anymore. . . But a war could be profitable, he imagined, and, so, why not encourage it? See what could happen. . . He opened and flexed his left palm, then crossed his waist with the hand to support the bundle of blocks with it. He set these down among the rocks beside the charred fireplace through the squat of his hips and bend of his knees. He inspected how he set the wood among its place between stones, and once he was sure that these were sound and would not fall, he turned his face up, eyes ahead to her. “May I meet your friend?” His hands removed from the wood, left hand coming to hold below his left knee, the right propped on the same-side thigh.

Dahna stood from her living seat and balanced over to him across the rocks. Her face was dipped downwards, eyes glancing from her footsteps to him. The beren’s red gaze did not blink or move. Dahna held out her right hand to Dilan, and he took it with his left, pushing out of the squat, her face raising with his. When he was stood, and she could see he was calm and ready, she turned to her left and led him by the hand to the beren, leaving the faint sphere of daylight behind them.

Stopping right of the beren, Dahna turned to Dilan and made him stand still with her hand against the valley of his chest. Her front facing him, she twisted to her right above her halak, holding Dilan’s left hand and reaching her right hand upwards, formed like a cup, high above her crests. There was silence but for a deep vibration Dilan could feel so close to the _thing_. He kept his breathing easy, face turned upwards at his left, watching as the shadow among shadow appeared to descend several feet until Dahna’s pale hand flattened out of the cup against something black. She turned her face towards Dilan, grinned to reassure him all was okay. He gazed down into her face, his lips apart in amazement and uncertainty. Lifting his left hand, she brought his fingers up, holding onto these as she placed his palm into contact with the skin of blackness above.

The red eyes glowing tilted down at him, enlarging ever so slightly, then minimizing into a narrow ellipse.

Dilan’s mouth opened more, as did his expression fill with awe. It was unlike anything he had felt before. Vibration as rocking as thunder, silent. Heat as comforting as fire, not burning. Scales smooth and satin as that of a snake. He could feel hard muscle yielding beneath the surface, and Dahna’s hand joined to his own, kept his hand sandwiched between more heat. She moved his hand gently over the beren’s skin, and he felt the ridge of a round jaw. Feeling braver, Dilan took control and began to experience the creature for himself, Dahna’s hand falling away. He rubbed his palm back and forth over the scales, admiring the quality of skin texture and marveling at its satin. His mouth moved in silent admiration. He suddenly glanced over his right bicep at Dahna, who had removed her hand to hold behind her back, looking up at his brown and yellow fingers exploring the beren’s underjaw, then turning her gaze to meet his. A small smile spread her lips at his wonder. She tilted her crests to the right as she watched and supervised him. “This thing—beren, you say. . . Is a predator? Does it ever attack Drell?” Dilan asked, looking up at it, then back to her expression.

“He does not kill Drell, not to eat at least,” she answered. “He only protects the tunnels from threats coming in or going out. He is a guardian, much like him,” she looked with a gentle shrug of her toned shoulders towards the mouth of the tunnel, then gazed back to Dilan.

“What do they eat?” he asked, gazing upward again.

“Rakhni.”

His face snapped down to hers suddenly, arm still. He lowered it to his side in order to see her better. “You have rakhni in these tunnels?”

“They are immune to their telepathy,” she said with a grave nod. “The beren keep them below the surface. . . It is an important balance they maintain.”

“What would happen if these things all died?” he followed up, glancing again at the beren and setting both hands on his waist.

“The rakhni would come out. . . They would be free,” she replied. “The beren use the rakhni for food. A few others use them for durriken,” she added, solemn, and glanced down at her left, then up towards the far darkness beyond them. She returned her gaze to Dilan. “It is what we will introduce you to in exchange for the trade of profit you shall earn from taking up with the Sousan.” She grinned, a forced grin at that. Hands upon her halak roll, she raised one to gently palm the green fabric over his chest, left it there to support herself as she took a step around and to the right of him, saying as she passed, “We will take care of you, Dilan. You will be well compensated for your modesty.” Dilan’s head and shoulders turned right to follow her with his stare, then twisted counterclockwise to check the beren, nod up at it as though this were a proper goodbye and thank you, and fulfilled his turn left to follow after Dahna.

“You said you’d introduce me to the Sousan,” he echoed to clarify as he followed behind her. Dahna bent down by the wood pile he had left and began to pick these up, block by block. “You going to tell me who they are or what they sell or trade for, maybe? I like to be prepared before I meet a potential business partner.” He balanced over and around her right. He stood above her, waiting, looking down. Dahna collected all of the blocks and rose, straightening her legs, halak hanging between.

“I will tell you along the way,” she said, turning her face to his. “Right now, we need to finish setting up these wood stores.” She turned her head towards the base of rocks below the cave’s entrance. “Collect my blocks and place them here, where these were,” she lifted her pile. “I will walk these down to the beren. He does not like it when things approach from the back, so. . . Be careful if you should ever happen to come upon one with its back turned. They feel through the deep vibrations they emit, and will sooner be upon you than you realize it.” She said this warning to his face.

“I thought you said they won’t attack Drell.”

“The only thing that comes upon a beren from behind is a rakhni. You would be in a very bad place, indeed, if you were coming from a colony into a beren’s attack.”

Dilan squinted his left set of eyelids at her. “A colony?”

“The rakhni live below ground in colonies of thousands. They commune sometimes with certain Drell. There are. . . Alliances in place. . . You will learn of one such.”

Dilan studied her a second longer, then lowering his hands from his chest to his waist, cape falling over his arms, with a lingering and suspicious stare he crossed from the fire spot towards the mouth of the tunnel. Dahna followed him with her face and eyes, holding the bundle of blocks in her arm. Then turning her face and body right, she balanced over each stone leading her back to the beren and the depths of the cave.

Dilan knelt beneath the mouth’s entrance, peered upward with his eyes squinting towards the skylight, then turned his face down and went about picking up the blocks. These had scattered, for the majority of them, among the main well of light. As he used his left hand to cradle the blocks to him in his right arm, his collection of wood slowed as his brow scales tensed in thought. He glanced behind him, turning somewhat left to peer down the tunnel towards Dahna’s tall, recedingly greying figure, then looked forward again. He quickly grabbed the rest of the blocks, rose, and turning, balanced back to the fireplace, where he stopped before it and set the wood down into its nestling of stones. Arranging the blocks nicely, he checked his pile, stood back up, and turned left now to cross towards the matting on which he had slept at night.

He knelt down on the soft padding, some red blanket beneath the brown above the down and fur. His hands and knees sank with his weight into the makeshift bedding as he crawled upon it, searching with his eyes into the dark clustering of stones beyond. His eyeridges raised as he moved forward, reaching among the rocks, feeling until he found the round contour of a vase, and grasping his reward, Dilan lifted the striped vessel with its lid that Dahna had retrieved the salve from the night prior. He brought it to his belly as he sat cross-legged on hips and boots, and bending over the vase, he held it firm with his left hand, raising the lid with a soft scrape using his right hand. He peered downward, the lid held out and open to the tunnel roof. Setting the lid back atop the vase, loosely tilted, he crossed his right hand in front of him above the vessel and removed the thick butching glove with his left fingers, quickly tugging the leather off each opposite digit. As it came, the thick salve that had dried, crumbled and scattered over the top of both vase and his lap. Dilan brushed the remaining crumbs caked onto his right hand’s skin, slowing his movements to consider the spread of dry leavings and the cut on his flesh. The wound was flush, not limpid, nor swollen. No blood or ooze flowed forth. He pushed the skin around Tihalt’s love bite, testing for pain or putrid surprises. He found it had begun to heal without anything leftover besides the crusting of the salve. Rubbing his thumb back and forth under the cut, he broke off the remaining dried dust. Thinking he should add more salve since the wound was still open, he turned his face to the vase and relifted the lid. He set this aside on the matting this time. With his left hand, Dilan reached inside the vase to scoop up some more salve. Dahna’s white legs and halak appeared, stepping onto the bedding right of him and extending her hand palm up, cupping her fingers in front of his upturned face. “Let me check it first,” she ordered.

“I’m sorry,” he said, removing his left hand to set this on the lip of the vase and raising his right hand to hers. Dahna took ownership of it in her left, kneeling down beside him, and examined the hand, rolling it towards her face and away from. She glanced at him coolly before probing around the cut with her right set of fingers, then tested his finger joints and wrist for stiffness and peripheral swelling. Satisfied, she pushed his hand back to him and exchanged this for the vase, plucking it up out of his lap with both hands and transferring this to her thighs. She gave him a narrowed look as she reached for the lid between them and replaced it. “There’s no infection,” she shared, the narrow look having not been dropped. She held the banded vase to her belly. “You should ask before taking,” she admonished, reiterating his words. Dahna turned away from him then, standing one knee at a time, and walking passed his turning face with its furrowed eyeridges.

“You could sell that cream, you know,” he replied, choosing not to take her to task. He watched her return the vase to its hiding place. “It could fetch a high price on the market. . . Free trade and all. . . Medicine is quite useful, and people love the homemade stuff.”

“ _Not_ for sale,” she retorted, lowering her face to his when she turned around from resetting the vase. Her eyeridges were raised, hands upon her halak.

“I could make you an offer,” Dilan persisted, widening his eyes and giving her an appealing smile. He spread his arms generously. “Could be a fortunate made in after overhead. . . You never know with these things. . . It could take off like an overnight—“

“ _Not. . . For. . . Sale_ ,” she repeated, stressing each word. She straightened and walked away from him, turning towards the mouth of the cave. Dilan followed her with his eyes, his mouth open, staring at her gone towards the light. He held out his left hand imploringly. “This could be a real deal-breaker! You know you’re making a mistake. Won’t you even consider. . .”

She shot him a cold look, twisting at her waist, arms straight down in fists beside her. She then turned, looked upwards, and reached both arms for the lip at the cavern roof. She started to pull herself out, boots leaving the stones.

Dilan stared at the vacant space she left. He rolled his lips between his teeth, glanced at where the vase lay, then with another furtive look at the tunnel mouth, he made towards the prize. Rolling forward on his boots’ ankles and off his hips, he posted on his right hand and reached with his left. “Stop!” The voice was Dahna’s. It had come from above the cave. Dilan flinched and reversed, quickly pushing his seat down and settling back on his cape. He turned a sheepish wince towards the mouth of the tunnel, then opened his eyes wider at the realization Dahna’s protest had not been directed at him. “Leave him alone!” There was the sound of scuffling. A heaviness landing. Dahna shouted out. The quality of her voice disturbed him. It was the sound of someone being subdued, and a drellahna at that. Dilan had already shifted forward onto his knees, and rising from the bedding, he moved towards the light. Before he could make five stones, balancing, he stilled, eyes wide, facing upwards. The light of the tunnel mouth reached his face. A shadow stretched over the rocks before him at his feet, moving up over his clothes, and he backed away before it set on his patak. Dilan made a quick check to his right, behind him, hands out either side in front for steadying. He lowered into a crouch and began to reverse backwards, balancing towards the bedding.

The pool of light coming through the mouth of the entrance was bright and stabbed by one long shadow, then accompanied by a second shorter one to its right. These reached inside the cave as two silent, ominous fingers. There were no features to make out.

Dilan felt the wall with his right set of fingertips, still making his way backwards over the rocks. He froze again when a female voice spoke down from above. It was not Dahna’s. It sounded old, harsh. “Whoever you are, come out. We have your two friends. There is no point in hiding. . . Not unless you deliberately want us to hurt them. . .” Dilan reached behind him, under his cape, and withdrew the gun in his left hand, aiming towards the mouth of the tunnel. His right hand posted against the wall of stone, Dilan hollered back to answer the threat.

“You have no decency hurting a drellahna. Why don’t you come down here and we can talk on my ground.” His voice was loud, confident, and the reverberation could be heard behind him. He kept his face to the tunnel’s entrance, waiting for one of the shadows to fall in with a foot or a body.

“Come up. Now. We haven’t hurt her.” The same voice, pausing, then adding, “At least nothing we haven’t treated her with before.” He despisingly detected an amused smile in the words. “She will live. . .”

“What about the other one?” Dilan demanded loudly. “The quiet fellow?”

The shadows shifted in the pool of light. Another moment’s pause, and the shadows appeared to be turning back towards the mouth. “He will be fine. . . Come up. You are wasting my patience. Make me wait any longer and we will certainly treat both drellahna and Morthwyl to a taste of your future punishment for my inconvenience.”

Dilan bared his teeth and mouthed a silent curse, his gun nozzle held upright within his grip. He glanced behind him towards the rear of the cave, then returned his eyes to the mouth. “If she weren’t so damn pretty, and that Morthwyl hadn’t fed me. . .” he muttered low to himself. Looking at the gun in his right hand, Dilan pressed his lips together and reached to store it behind him in its holster. He straightened, raising his chest, and took a deep breath as he bent his face downward, copper eyes glued to the entrance. He could try his luck with the tunnel and see where that would lead him, but the beren was only a recent introduction, and Dahna had warned him about rakhni and berens’ sensitivity. He would have to take his chances. . . Plus, he really did like Dahna. Even her friend had been welcoming enough to feed him and let him share their cave without questions being asked until morning. And Dilan had tried to kiss Dahna, as well as having made up some stories that weren’t quite genuine. “Damn it as usual,” Dilan grated, balling and opening his fists. He glared at the roof of the tunnel. Exhaling outwards forcibly, he carried himself forth on his legs, swinging his arms forward and behind him.

He picked up his butching glove from the bedding as he stepped around it, then looked up at the cave mouth and called, “I’m coming out. Back away and let me get some breathing room when I come up there.” He glanced down at the stones as he added falsely, but convincing enough, “I don’t care about the other two. I hardly know them. Just arrived here and they gave me some room and board before imprisoning me in this hole. Now make space! I’m coming up.” He stepped into the well of light, peering upward with a squint. He jumped backwards quickly as a spirally bladed spear stuck through the hole. Dilan shielded his face from the flashing light and potential for injury. Someone drily chuckled from above, Dilan staring at the impressive silver coils as sharp as can-openers to his eyes. He looked through his hands, then to the roof of the tunnel as he lowered these. The intricate blade was removed, and a thick wooden shaft replaced it, the spiro having been spun around to present its handle.

“A help up,” a male voice said from above. Dilan pursed his lips and took a moment to think again, as he contemplated the shaft’s end through the tunnel mouth.

“How do I know you won’t kill me?” The voice came back, harsh.

“Get up here, fool. You’re wasting our time. Either we come down there and drag you out, or you come up here of your own volition. Choose.” Dilan flapped his arms at his sides with a slap against his clothing.

“That still doesn’t tell me whether you’re going to kill me or not.”

“Dahna,” the female voice said, the left shadow shifting as though turning around. “Tell him to come up.” There was a silence for the beat of six seconds, and then Dahna’s soft, contralto voice came down to his listening.

“They only wish to learn of you, Dilan. . . Come up now. We’re alright—for what it’s worth,” she added, voice tapering in what was certainly disappointment. Dilan’s eyes dropped guiltily to the stones on the cave wall left of him. He breathed deeply inward, chest rising as he hit the side of his right thigh with a closed fist, shaking the cape. “Fine,” he agreed then, shaking his crests and stepping towards the mouth of the tunnel above him. “Let’s have this done with.” He stopped in the main source of light, crests tilting forward, then with a set look in his eyes, he glared at the staff waiting for him. He pushed this aside with his left hand and opted to climb out on his own. Grasping the edges of the mouth of the cave, he pulled upwards, face full of daylight and grimness. He assisted himself by pushing with his boots off the stones of the wall. His cape swung behind him as he hauled, bulk blocking the light from the tunnel. In that moment, the beren’s red eyes lit in the back of the cave, stared at the flickering light source as figures above the tunnel joined in a brief scuffle. Someone grunted, following the sound of a heavy hand into flesh. Then the sound of dragging over dirt and pebbles. The beren waited a moment longer before closing its eyes again.


End file.
